All eyes on Toronto’s second line

What will the second line look like in Toronto this season?

It’s one of the more intriguing questions facing a presumptive Stanley Cup-calibre team this season. The Maple Leafs lineup is deep and talented, and save for a goaltending flameout – which must be recognized as a bona fide risk at this point – they should walk into the postseason. There is simply too much scoring firepower across the roster for them to miss. That result would be in line with what we have seen in recent years, where the Maple Leafs have amassed more points than any team not playing in Colorado, Boston, the state of Florida, or Carolina.

But their line combinations and general deployment still need to be sorted through. We have reasonable confidence that head coach Sheldon Keefe will regularly play Michael Bunting and Mitch Marner with Auston Matthews on the top line, and why wouldn’t he? It’s an impressive combination of agility, playmaking, and forechecking on the wings of perhaps the best shooter in the league. Few lines have out-produced the Matthews group over the years, and Toronto clearly has something here that works.

Behind them, John Tavares will play centre, but the wings are a question mark. William Nylander, Alex Kerfoot, Calle Jarnkrok, Nick Robertson, and Pierre Engvall are all plausible names. Which two make the most sense remains a debate.

Count me in as someone who thinks that Toronto will turn to a unit that’s tried and true, with Nylander and Kerfoot on the wing of Tavares to start the year. There’s been a bit of blowback against redressing this line, in part because it means Toronto’s running a lineup that looks strikingly similar to the one that’s disappointed come playoff time.

But it’s hard to walk from this group, too. Among other things, it’d be very difficult to take one of the team’s most productive forwards in Nylander and move him to a third line. And despite inconsistent play, the broader group (with Kerfoot) has produced.

What’s the statistical argument? Consider the last three seasons in Toronto at even strength, where we have seen this trio play more than 700 minutes together. There have been disappointing stretches, but by and large they are outplaying their competition when together.

The cool thing is we can look at every possible combination Toronto has tried with this group and see where downside performance issues have manifested. Here is the data:

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If you look at the trio that’s played more than 700 minutes together, they own about 53 per cent of the goal share and their underlying measures of territorial control – whether you are using shots or shots adjusted for quality (expected goals) – are in line. That is strong indication their goal advantage has been built through control of play, which tends to be a reliable predictor of future outcomes. 

If we want to see which straw is stirring the drink, we can isolate on a bunch of different player combinations to see what has worked, and what hasn’t. For example: the combination of Tavares and Kerfoot, without Nylander, has outperformed the combination of Tavares and Nylander without Kerfoot. It’s in less overall time, about 400 minutes of action, but this tandem has played well together. And though we may think of Nylander as being one of the team’s best wingers and much more entrenched on the second line than Kerfoot, it’s Kerfoot so far who has had better relative results with Tavares.

Less surprising is the fact the one weak group is Nylander and Kerfoot when playing without Tavares. This is on a base of 300 minutes of action, so a relatively smaller sample size, but it’s in line with what we would expect – weaker centres further down the lineup do less for Kerfoot and Nylander than Tavares does, and consequently, results suffer.
Toronto has plenty of options here and if they want to flatten their lines a bit and displace some talent on the third line, we could see someone – likely Kerfoot – shuffled down the lineup. But despite the consternation with this group from time to time, it’s important to step back and recognize they generally have done their job.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement, or that another combination can’t outplay this group as soon as this upcoming season. But it does mean the bar to clear, when opting to change this lineup, for Keefe and the coaching staff should be high, and it’s going to take some impressive work in training camp and preseason from one of the bottom-six wingers to crack the team’s second line.

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