Maple Leafs forced to make defensive changes after icing one of the worst defensive pairings in the league
The Toronto Maple Leafs have started the season 2-1-0 with victories against the Montreal Canadiens and Minnesota Wild, with their lone defeat coming at the hands of the lowly Chicago Blackhawks, in front of the hometown crowd at Scotiabank Arena no-less.
As expected, the offense has been clicking with 5 goals on 42 shots in their season opener, 7 goals on 33 shots against Minnesota, and although they only scored once against Chicago, they fired 35 shots towards the net with 28 of them coming in the final 2 frames.
In the grand scheme of things, it's still relatively early in the season to be pushing the panic button, but things haven't gone as swimmingly as we all had hoped. Ilya Samsonov is rusty between the pipes and the defense has been abysmal, which prompted Sheldon Keefe to make some in-game changes in their loss to the Blackhawks.
The defensive pairing of John Klingberg and Jake McCabe was split up after the duo had allowed a league-worst 21 high-danger scoring chances in the first 3 games. The idea - or at least the hope - was that McCabe's defensive style would be able to counter-balance Klingberg's offensive aggressiveness but it has done the opposite and has been a major reason as to why the back-end is a mess.
Now while it's easy to pin the blame on Klingberg, T.J. Brodie and Mark Giordano haven't been stalwarts either with a GA/60 of 4.23 and 3.68, respectively. This forced Keefe's hand as he jumbled up the pairings in practice yesterday with the hope of turning things around.
As things stand heading into their tilt against the Florida Panthers, Morgan Rielly is with T.J. Brodie, Jake McCabe is now with Timothy Liljegren, and Mark Giordano is with John Klingberg. Defense was never their strong suit but when a pairing has been that porous, changes have to be made as soon as possible.
With games against Florida, Tampa Bay, Washington, Dallas, Nashville, and Los Angeles on the docket to end the month of October, the Leafs are going to have to improve defensively if they want to maintain their position at the top of the Eastern Conference. The schedule doesn't get any easier in November either, so finding the right combinations on the back-end is going to be that much more important moving forward.
For the time being, Keefe made the right call in splitting up the McCabe-Klingberg pairing, so let's see if it pays dividends tomorrow night in Florida with the Leafs facing off against Matthew Tkachuk and company for first time since their second round playoff matchup earlier in 2023.
| POLL | ||
OCTOBRE 19 | 110 ANSWERS Maple Leafs forced to make defensive changes after icing one of the worst defensive pairings in the league Was the John Klingberg experiment a bad idea? | ||
| Yes, I've been saying this all along! | 45 | 40.9 % |
| No, he just needs time to settle in | 20 | 18.2 % |
| It's too early to judge yet | 45 | 40.9 % |
| List of polls | ||
