William Nylander and Auston Matthews reunite on a top line that needed a change
Sheldon Keefe didn’t want to make this change.
He could have made it weeks ago . But he didn’t, and the why was obvious: William Nylander was rocking out, playing the best hockey of his life. His line with John Tavares and Tyler Bertuzzi had been shredding opponents night after night.
“We’ve been really reluctant to mess with that,” Keefe said. “You don’t want to affect guys who are rolling and feeling good in order to boost other groups. But I think the time’s right.”
The Toronto Maple Leafs coach could wait no longer. Something had to give . All it took for Keefe to finally make a move was a so-so night or two from the Nylander unit and, more to the point, more of the same season-long struggles from Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner over the weekend in visits to the Chicago Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins .
And so, a change, the usual change in situations like this: Nylander reunites with Matthews and rookie Matthew Knies , and Marner rejoins Tavares on a second unit with Bertuzzi.
It’s early in Leafs practice today but the top two lines have seen a switch:Knies-Matthews-Nylander
Bertuzzi-Tavares-Marner
— Joshua Kloke November 27, 2023
“I think sometimes a little change can help everybody,” Matthews said. “I just think with the way the weekend went, mixing things up isn’t the worst thing.”
Said Marner: “It’s just trying to obviously jump-start something, and hopefully it works.”
This is more or less the way things played out last season.
Matthews and Marner started sluggishly together. Keefe waited, waited some more, then finally decided to switch things up on Nov. 12.
Nylander spent the next two months (nearly) with Matthews while Marner cooked with Tavares. The Leafs flipped the two right wingers again and again after that — anytime Keefe needed a spark, really (including in the playoffs).
Most intriguing for the Leafs is what this version of Nylander does for Matthews. They hammered teams together last season when Nylander wasn’t quite, well, this. The Leafs outscored teams 30-10 when Matthews, Nylander and Michael Bunting were out there together, the top goals-for percentage of any highly used line in the league (minimum 300 minutes).
Matthews scored a little more playing with Nylander (1.5 goals per 60 minutes) than he did with Marner (1.3), though he not surprisingly also took fewer shots. His point production also surged with Nylander.
This version of Nylander is even better, even more dominant and in control of events. The attention he’s drawing (demanding!) these days should open more shooting space for Matthews, who has gone seven consecutive games without a five-on-five goal for the second time already this season.
Conversely, the threat of the Matthews shot should draw a wee bit of attention away from Nylander. Both sit among the league leaders in goals this season.
“You can just see when he’s moving his feet and he stays on the puck — he’s obviously (got) all the skill in the world — but just his competitiveness and his attack mentality, I think, has been really evident this year,” Matthews said of Nylander’s levelling up this season.
The trade-off for Nylander in playing up with Matthews is stiffer competition up front and on the back end.
Until the Leafs’ most recent game in Pittsburgh, Matthews and Marner were still drawing the toughest defensive players opponents had to offer, which meant slightly lighter foes for Nylander and his linemates to roast on.
Playing with Matthews will mean facing off against No. 1 lines and D pairings regularly. It’s a challenge Nylander is accustomed to from past experiences playing with Matthews but one that will demand more from him.
As Keefe noted, Nylander hasn’t had to spend much time defending this season because he’s been so dominant on offence. According to NHL player tracking, Nylander has spent 35.7 percent of his ice time in the defensive zone this season, down from 36.8 percent last season. That’s an all-situations number, but it still highlights what’s been apparent through the first quarter of the season.
Keefe’s reluctance to mess with Nylander’s mojo is understandable, though if there’s anyone who won’t be bothered by something like this, it’s Nylander.
Nylander should provide Matthews with the spark he needs, the one that was lacking during a disconnected start with Marner.
A little less certain is whether Marner will find his game again playing with Tavares.
Their connection has never felt quite as spicy as it did during Tavares’ first season in Toronto, when he, Marner and Zach Hyman were the Leafs’ most dangerous unit. It’s still been an effective combination, though: The Leafs outscored teams 28-16 in their minutes last season, winning a solid though hardly spectacular 53 percent of the expected goals.
This feels less about that, though, and more about Marner and doing something to get him rolling again.
He hasn’t been peak Marner often, if at all, this season.
“Obviously, not as great as it usually is and as I like it,” Marner said of his performance.
Said Keefe: “He knows that he needs to be better. We’re gonna help him through it.”
Which meant guiding Marner to focus on the things that will “help him start to be Mitch Marner, the Mitch Marner that we know.”
Marner mentioned needing to play with more energy and pace. He noted that he hadn’t been getting the puck with a whole lot of speed. He’s also been nowhere near as sharp with the puck.
“Not really trusting my abilities out there,” Marner said. “That’s something that needs to change.”
Marner joins a twosome in Bertuzzi and Tavares that had been thriving with Nylander. Bertuzzi especially has looked more like the wrecking ball the Leafs need in their top six. He should benefit from Marner’s passing around the net, not unlike how Bunting, another blue-paint pest, thrived with Marner feeding him pucks.
Tavares, too, figures to see a few extra looks with a pass-first Marner by his side. Nine of the 16 five-on-five goals the Leafs captain scored last season were set up directly by Marner. (Only three came from Nylander.)
Marner should also benefit from the lighter competition and fewer defensive-zone draws that come with not playing with Matthews.
He took off last season not long after Keefe made this same switch.
The Leafs coach is obviously hoping it does the trick again. He’ll inevitably circle back to Matthews-Marner, just as he did last season. A change was needed, though, and short of making wholesale changes to the lineup, which was at least discussed, Keefe made the most logical move.
— Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference and Evolving-Hockey.
(Top photo: Fred Kfoury III / Icon Sportswire via )
