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McCabe playing a vital, valuable role for Maple Leafs

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Where would the Toronto Maple Leafs be without Jake McCabe?

Two seasons ago, the Maple Leafs acquired McCabe in a multi-player deal with the Chicago Blackhawks in an attempt to bolster their blueline. Hours before the trade, we argued here McCabe could end up being the prize of the deadline — a productive player reliably outperforming his peers on otherwise abysmal teams over the years.

For my money, he was one of the more undervalued players in the league, and one who could flourish in a better environment.

Fast forward to the present day, and the freshly extended McCabe feels critical to the success of this Maple Leafs team — and, notably, it’s a team that is winning just as many games on the defensive side of the ice as it is offensively this season.

When McCabe went down to an upper-body injury two weeks ago, you felt the loss of his presence on the blueline in a meaningful way, with the team losing three straight games. When he returned against the New Jersey Devils on Thursday night, the lineup once again felt like a force.

In fact, Toronto has not lost in January with McCabe on the ice. McCabe has always been a steady off-puck defender since entering the league, but his growth and comfort as part of the attack has made him a seamless fit across a much more talented Maple Leafs lineup, and the numbers are staggering.

Just how vital is McCabe? Look at Toronto’s on-ice and off-ice splits as an appetizer:

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Simply stated, that’s dominant performance. Toronto has been a full goal better than the opponents at even strength with McCabe on the ice for three seasons now; that advantage is cut by two-thirds whenever either of Toronto’s other two pairings are deployed.

That gap says an awful lot about McCabe’s contributions, particularly for a Toronto team that’s dependably beaten up on the opposition during the regular season. It’s just very difficult to build up this degree of relative outperformance on a good team.

Even compared to Toronto’s star players over this same period, McCabe’s on-ice dominance looks a lot like that of Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, who combined consume nearly 28 per cent of Toronto’s salary cap.

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What’s notable about McCabe this season in particular is that he’s been given an opportunity to play with another stalwart veteran defender in Chris Tanev. Long gone are the days of a young Leafs team making a mess of the defensive zone. Mistakes are close to non-existent when this duo is on the ice right now, and when playing behind attackers like Marner, Matthew Knies, and John Tavares, they can and will take the game to you offensively.

And while Tanev’s skill set surely is additive to McCabe’s play this season, it’s not as if McCabe had this luxury a season ago. Part of the reason the Maple Leafs brain trust extended him this summer surely came from the confidence of watching him carry pairings with Simon Benoit and Timothy Liljegren a season ago.

If nothing else, it’s a reminder the trade deadline offers teams critical opportunities to build rosters out in the short and long term. Yes, there are tremendous overpays for middling talent every season, but there are also plenty of examples of well-run franchises finding these undervalued assets. McCabe is just the latest example of a player whose reputation may have been sullied by a poor quality of talent around him in Chicago and Buffalo — even despite his routine outperformance in those lineups.

Teams won’t believe Toronto is capable of being a defensive force until they prove it in the postseason. And, to some degree, I think that skepticism is fair when it comes to this inexperienced goaltending group. But part the halfway part of the season, Toronto’s conceding goals at an identical clip to that of the Carolina Hurricanes and Minnesota Wild. That’s the sort of company this franchise couldn’t have possibly kept just a few years ago, and players like McCabe have been integral in shoring this team up defensively.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey