Monday Notes, as the regular-season winds down — The Fourth Period

Let’s knock out a Monday Notes column, some timely thoughts as well as an emptying of the mental notebook as the season winds down.

~ Puts on his suit, tie, and Morgan Rielly #44 jersey, and sits down ~

“We didn’t have alignment through all aspects of our business. If you look at each team, each team has certain verticals, and the verticals weren’t horizontally integrated…”

Man, my day job is in the midst of major M&A activity. I watch hockey to get away from the verticals and horizontals, let alone the integrations. If he’d have said a single word about funnels and levels, I’d have absolutely lost it. Somebody get this guy an API for how to talk to the public about hockey.

~ If the best story in hockey isn’t the Buffalo Sabres, then…I’m probably forgetting something. Which is fine, because seeing the Sabres not only become relevant for the first time since the 2000s, but dominate that relevance, it’s damn-near enough to see palm trees sprout from the cement in the Aud – I mean KeyBank.

~ As I watch 2nd line center Mitch Marner (23-54-77 in 76 games) set up Colton Sissons for Sissons’ sixth goal of the season (one of Saturday’s two late games, VGK vs EDM), I think back to last year (stay with me, you haven’t heard this take). I’m on record as saying that one of Leafs’ HC Craig Berube’s failings in Toronto is his inability to set proper lines. There’s been talk during multiple training camps and at least two attempts to make William Nylander a center. Why wasn’t this done with Marner? (Okay, you’ve heard that part? Stay with me, there’s way more.) Nylander doesn’t work for the simple fact that sometimes, he cares, and sometimes, he doesn’t. Berube holds his centers to a higher standard than that (as he should), so Nylander doesn’t work there. So, if you can’t put Nylander there because he’s a net-negative defensively, why not Marner?

When you watch Nylander on TV, he looks 6’1”-6’2”, though he’s listed on NHL.com as being 6’0”, 200 lbs. Marner, who looks like Cole Caufield on TV, is also 6’0”, and 180 lbs. Marner played center in Junior hockey under the watchful eye of NHL Hall of Fame Center and London Knights’ Head Coach Dale Hunter, and is the smartest player on the ice, at least for his team, most every shift he’s on the ice. Too small? There are smaller centers, and smaller scoring centers (Nick Suzuki is 5’11”, 207 lbs” and I won’t hear the weight issue because Marner doesn’t get hit, too smart). So now, the question is:

Would you rather Marner put up 102 points on Auston Matthews’ wing, or put up 83 points as a center, with John Tavares and William Nylander on his flanks? Tavares (more on him later) badly needs to be moved to the wing, and Nylander being able to face and pass to Marner would have created, well, the most creative 2nd line in hockey, and one more creative than most 1st lines, a line that easily plays at a first line level. 83 points is likely the floor centering that line.

But wait, while you ponder that concept, there’s more. Marner’s biggest failing in the playoffs was his lack of offensive production. But why though? Because he was infamous for carrying the puck into the offensive zone from the right side (zone entry!), slowing down, having no one to pass to, circling back, going to the boards, stopping moving his feat, and getting stripped in a 50/50 puck battle. Adam Oates, who says he loves Marner’s game – well of course he does, Oates was famous for crossing the blueline and slowing down. The difference was that the game wasn’t as tight during Oates’ peak so he could find a seam and create a scoring opportunity (as his 1,079 assists and 1,420 career points can attest to). Oates would have the same trouble in today’s game. Now, imagine Marner either entering the zone with Nylander there to drop the puck to, or Nylander being the zone entry monster, using his speed to pull the LD to him, opening up a half-second of space for Marner to take the drop pass and either hit Tavares driving the net or put the puck on net, more likely low blocker for a kick out save to Tavares to try to score on a rebound. Either way, both are scoring opportunities, pressure, neither of which Marner could consistently create in the playoffs (consistently, especially late in series (Sportsnet always had the Game 7 graphics ready for how much the Core Four didn’t score in Game 7’s).

Part of a coach’s job is to set his players up for success, because if he does that, his team has its best chance of winning. All of this comes to one single question: If Toronto had put Mitch Marner at center, would history have been different? (Typed while watch Marner play a strong zone defense and cross the ice from board-to-board to get the puck out of the zone against strong Edmonton pressure.) Toronto clearly needed regular season Marner this year, and him putting up over a point per game while solving the 2nd line center issue would have been a game-changer. It would’ve needed to happy years ago though, to change history.

~ Zach Hyman: 31 goals in 57 games.
~ Bo Horvat: 30 goals in 64 games.

I didn’t need to watch Islanders games every night (or like, twice a year?) to know that Horvat would disappear when it mattered in the Olympics. I don’t care about breakaways vs lesser countries, it was always about the finals, the U.S., and his lack of impact in that game was inevitable. Hyman, defensive warts this year or not, would have made his presence known against the U.S., and would have played better D at that level, as he’s shown throughout his career that he can.

And whether it was over $500,000/year, a full NMC, or both (I’ve heard both over the years), as this is in part a Toronto hindsight article, doesn’t it feel like Toronto should have given Hyman what he wanted to keep him? He’s been, without question, part of the solution in Edmonton (and could have been at the Olympics).

~ There is one hockey-related aspect to the trial against the five members of Canada’s 2018 WJC team that’s always bothered me: In his testimony, Brett Howden repeatedly used his history of concussions as a reason he had a hard time remembering facts from that night. If that was really true, did the NHL step in and demand the Vegas medical staff conduct full-spectrum cognitive testing to determine whether Howden, who ostensibly claimed brain damage affected his memory in the trial, should still be allowed to play in the NHL? Did Vegas do this proactively after hearing the testimony? We both know the answer to this, as Gary Bettman has repeatedly said that hockey does not cause CTE, but hey, let’s not think about any of this and let common sense get in the way.

John Tavares is a future hall of famer, full stop. Toronto fans and some media alike have treated him horrendously, and the underappreciation makes my skin crawl. A few facts:

In 2021, when Toronto let Montreal come back from a 3-1 deficit to win their 1st round series in 7 games, leading to Montreal making the Stanley Cup Finals, both Jake Muzzin and Tavares missed multiple games. Tavares went out in the first period of the first game, taking away a 1st line-level player anchoring Toronto’s second line. Muzzin, meanwhile, went out in the 2nd period of game six. One of those injuries, you can maybe handle. But your 2nd line center playing 1st line-level hockey and your top defensive defenseman? That wasn’t Tavares’ fault (nor was it Kyle Dubas’).

Tavares’ leadership had nothing to do with Toronto’s lack of playoff success. Hell, he scored the OT winner in game six vs Tampa Bay to lead the Leafs to a first round victory against the recent two-time Stanley Cup champions in 2023, their first opening round victory in 19 years.

Tavares leads in a similar way to Sidney Crosby – head-down, quiet fire, consistent, intense, steady, balanced. He wasn’t the reason why Marner couldn’t get more than 55 feet from the net with the puck, or wasn’t playing center, or why Matthews couldn’t create without Marner producing, or the injuries to players and goalies alike, or the fact that Boston exists.

When Matthews got hurt this year, Tavares went from playing in the 18 minutes per game range into the 22-23-minute range, and quickly got tired. Berube buries his top centers in the defensive zone and expects them to get the puck out and create offense. You can do that some, but not the amount that Berube does. It’s exhausting hockey. It’s one of many reasons why Matthews has stopped producing at an MVP-level, and it wrecked the middle section of Tavares’ season. Suddenly, the pundits were saying that Tavares, who had been over a point per game player before Matthews’ latest injury, was having a bad season, his age (35) was now a factor, and it was in part his fault that the Leafs’ season was falling apart.

All a bunch of bunk.

It’s very simple: Give Tavares the Steven Stamkos treatment, make him a winger, and he’ll be more productive and effective. By the way: 30-38-68 in 77 games, and 10 goals since the Olympic rest period. Carrying a depleted and defeated Leafs’ offense, that’s far from a bad year. Along with the same leadership, regardless of which letter is on his jersey, he is part of why Toronto management is selling a retool next year.

Auston Matthews stays in Toronto… at least one more year. He’s not my captain (see above), but he is loyal. He’ll give them one more year.

Brady Tkachuk… you can only be part of the solution on the ice and part of the problem off the ice for so long. Something will have to give.

During the few days where Artemi Panarin’s trade status exploded, ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski was the only non-Athletic author (and even then, I only saw one) who mentioned the fact that Panarin had been accused of sexual assault in 2023, settled in 2024, and made public in 2025. Why does that matter? Culture. I guarantee you, categorically, 100%, that not everyone in the LA room who knew the details of that situation was happy to have him come into their room. You want to go to battle beside players you can trust, not people that you’d be worried if your wife/girlfriend ended up alone in an elevator with them. Kudos to Wyshynski, for reminding hockey fans that there is a human element to the game behind the scenes. A massive one, at that.

As Vegas wrecks Edmonton 5-1 tonight, and TRENT FREDERIC tries to start a fight at the end of the game, could one of the most disappointing players in the NHL this year be waking up in time for a potential (likely?) 1st round matchup between Edmonton and Vegas?

The Toronto rumour mill is going wild over the inevitable Brad Treliving firing and subsequent Keith Pelley press conference. Too many unknowns here. What I can tell you is that Mike Gillis is intriguing (go look up his presentation to Mario & Co. in 2021), though I don’t think he’s, frankly, considered cool enough to get the President of Hockey Operations job of the biggest team in hockey (seriously, this is all high school, just much greyer and richer). Doug Armstrong is staying in St. Louis to mentor incoming GM Alex Steen the same way that Bob Gainey mentored him. The fact that John Chayka’s name is popping up is very intriguing (has his blacklisting for doing something that many GMs do and getting caught ended?), and Chris Pronger is…intriguing. If you look at his post-playing career, you can see Pronger being a GM, or a POHO, without question. Is this job, specifically the ask that’s going to be made of the new leadership to retool on-the-fly with few assets and in a depressed UFA market, too big of an ask for a Pronger to take on? Or will his overall experience, intelligence, and leadership ability be enough to pull off the impossible?

Circling back to Chayka, from 30,000 feet, if Chayka was hired by Toronto to be the GM, and his wife, say, owned 12 Wendy’s franchises, and Pelley ever started with the verticals and horizontals, would Chayka turn to Pelley with a straight face and say:

Sir, this is a Wendy’s.

H/t to: NHL.com, HockeyDB, and you’re welcome for 2,100 words and zero analytics.