Bender said:
CarltonTheBear said:
Noticed something funny looking at last years record: from December 29th 2017 to January 18th 2018 the Leafs went 2-3-4, or had 2 wins and 7 losses. This season from December 29th 2018 to January 20th 2018 the Leafs went 3-7.
Anyway last season the Leafs pretty much immediately turned things around after that stretch and went 24-9-2 to finish the season.
I'd like to see some analysis on this. You kind of wonder why the coaching staff isn't adjusting or trying different plays and lines/pairings.
Well it's not exactly a secret that Babcock can be a pretty stubborn coach. Sometimes it works out (hey, don't really see anybody complaining about Hyman much anymore), and sometimes it doesn't work out (see: Ron Hainsey).
With that said, Babcock did do a number of things that positively effected the Leafs after that 17/18 stretch. Herman mentioned a couple already: he started to limit Komarov's minutes and he started playing Kapanen over Martin (Johnsson came later in the season). The Marleau-Kadri-Marner line was also put together on the 24th of January, so pretty much right when the Leafs started to win games again. Those changes pretty much rejuvenated the team.
Can Babcock do something similar this season? Marleau might be this years Komarov. He's 4th among forwards on the team in 5-on-5 ice-time, and that's probably too high for him. It might be time to try and cut his minutes back a little bit.
Can Moore be this years Kapanen? I don't think he has the same upside at all but last season Kapanen really only played a 4th line role and he completely changed it's impact. Moore had the same effect in his short time here. It sounds like he'll be coming up with Johnsson's injury. Hopefully it'll be a 1-way trip this time.
Can putting Kadri and Marner together have the same effect his season that it did last season? I'd give it a shot. We all know how great Marner and Tavares are together, but maybe it's time to split them up to get the rest of the team going. Last season Kadri has 2 points in 20 games pre-Marner, and 30 points in 33 games post-Marner. This season he's not in quite that much of a rut, but if we could get Kadri going in the 2nd half like he did in last seasons 2nd half that'd be huge. Maybe try running Kadri-Marner, Tavares-Nylander, Matthews-Kapanen.
But really though at the end of the day the players do just have to play better.