Maple Leafs Make Puzzling Decision With Top Power Play Unit
Ahead of their first pre-season game, the Maple Leafs held a morning skate where they worked through special teams, revealing a power play head-scratcher.
Last season, the Leafs' power play struggled down the stretch, and as it has in previous seasons, had gone ice cold during the playoffs. With that, the Leafs' coaching staff underwent significant changes bringing in Craig Berube, Lane Lambert and Marc Savard, with Savard taking over the power play as he did in St. Louis under Berube.
It appears that before making changes to the top unit, Savard is going to instill some new ideas first. How do we know this? Well, during the morning skate, Auston Matthews, William Nylander, John Tavares, Mitch Marner and Morgan Rielly skated together as the top unit. Again.
Earlier this week, The Athletic's Jonas Siegel predicted that Oliver Ekman-Larsson would replace Rielly on the top power play unit to provide more of a shooting threat from the blueline. However, OEL lined up as the point man on the second unit with Max Domi, Max Pacioretty, Nikita Grebenkin and Matthew Knies during Sunday rushes.
Keeping the first unit together makes sense from a coaching perspective simply because Savard can bring new ideas and play designs to a highly skilled group. However, if things stall or don't work, we should see much quicker changes to the on-ice personnel than we did under Sheldon Keefe and Guy Boucher.
| POLL | ||
22 SEPTEMBRE | 1007 ANSWERS Maple Leafs Make Puzzling Decision With Top Power Play Unit Do you trust Marc Savard to improve the Leafs' power play this season? | ||
| Yes | 505 | 50.1 % |
| No | 201 | 20 % |
| Not sure, but I'll give him a chance | 301 | 29.9 % |
| List of polls | ||
