Could The Maple Leafs Shuffle Power Play Units After ‘God Awful’ 0-For-5 Performance Against Capitals?

The Toronto Maple Leafs are trying to put several pieces of the puzzle together right now, and one of the biggest is the team’s power play.

Entering Thursday’s game against the Washington Capitals, Toronto sat 30th in the NHL with a power play operating at just 15 percent. Despite that, there were a few positives as of late, like Auston Matthews’ power play goal a few nights earlier against the Chicago Blackhawks.

Though after five opportunities on the man advantage against the Capitals, where Toronto couldn’t muster up one goal, they’ve fallen even deeper into the abyss, with a 14 percent success rate on the power play (only ahead of the Calgary Flames in the NHL, who are operating at 13.8 percent).

“The power play has actually been getting better, but tonight it was god awful, in my opinion,” said a frustrated Craig Berube after a 4-0 loss to the Capitals.

“I thought the other unit did some good things. They had a couple opportunities, and just the misfire didn’t go in. They had some good chances, but our top unit didn’t execute, didn’t win any battles when they needed to, just couldn’t make plays.”

Back in the 2022-23 season, whenever the Maple Leafs went to the man advantage, their opponent would do everything they could to stop them. And it still wouldn’t be enough. For years before that, Toronto operated one of the deadliest power plays in the NHL.

It was well known that if you took a penalty against the Maple Leafs, one of their stars was going to make you pay. It was more often than not Matthews.

Now, it feels as though it’s the other way around.

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And you can say what you want about Mitch Marner exiting the fold. However, Toronto still has two sharpshooters in Matthews and William Nylander, along with other weapons in John Tavares, Matthew Knies, and Morgan Rielly.

Though nowadays, when Toronto goes to the man advantage, their opponent becomes almost immortal. The Maple Leafs don’t get shots on net. Half of the time, they can’t even get into the opposition’s end.

Even when they do, as we saw in their shutout loss to the Capitals on Thursday, there was no offense being generated. Toronto had five power plays in the game and tallied just five shots during the man advantage throughout the game.

(Three of those shots came from the second unit, courtesy of Nicolas Roy and Nick Robertson.)

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How can a power play with this much star power be this defective?

Toronto’s captain stood in front of the cameras inside Capital One Arena after Thursday’s loss and said execution needs to improve.

“It’s like one, two passes, and then, like, the next one’s, you know, not a good one, or it’s just not being executed,” said Matthews. “I thought we had some good progress, and that tonight was definitely a step back in that regard, just as far as execution goes, opportunities.”

Tavares echoed the same.

“Execution hasn’t been good enough,” he said.

“Our puck support, our ability to be sharper, and just harder, and just being very determined to be better than the penalty kill, and create opportunities, and obviously, eventually put the puck in the net, especially with the personnel we have.”

Of the 85 power play opportunities the Maple Leafs have gotten this season, they’ve only capitalized 12 times. No other team in the NHL has scored less than that.

Could it be time for a change of personnel on the man advantage?

“Yeah, it could be,” Berube asserted. “Yeah, for sure. That’s something we’ll definitely look at.”

For a team that has a former Rocket Richard Trophy winner in Matthews, a runner-up for that same trophy in Nylander, a 38-goal scorer last season in Tavares, and others like Knies, Morgan Rielly, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, power play goals should be like picking apples from a tree.

But it’s not. And it doesn’t appear it will be getting any easier anytime soon. Unless something changes.