When the Maple Leafs hired Mike Babcock in 2015, he was the right man for the job - at the time.
Babcock took a 30th place Leafs team in 2015-16 and propelled them to new heights with his unwavering structure, commanding full-effort each and every night, which ultimately led to 3 consecutive playoff berths for the Buds from 2016-17 through 2018-19.
At some point along the way, it became evident that Babs had lost the room and, as a result, he was relieved of his coaching duties after posting a 9-10-4 record through the team's first quarter.
Enter Sheldon Keefe, who stepped in to replace Babcock as the new bench boss of a Leafs team that was well outside of a playoff spot a little over one month ago. How have they done since? The Buds are 11-4-0 under the new coach, but it's not the record that is most important. It's the energy surrounding the team.
The team has been absolutely buzzing - even during the games in which they came up a bit short. You could make an argument that the Leafs deserved a better fate against both Philadephia and Colorado at the beginning of December. Games in which they were visibly dominant at times, yielding no results for the concerted two-way effort. Had the puck luck been in their favour, we could very well be looking at a 13-2 Leafs team since Keefe took over.
Hypotheticals aside, the Maple Leafs are running at a 120-point pace under Sheldon Keefe. To put that into perspective, even with Babcock's abysmal first-quarter, Keefe still has the Leafs in line to reach 107 points, a far cry from the 87 point pace they were on just a few weeks ago.
In a recent article, The Athletic's James Mirtle proposes the idea that the three main reasons for the Leafs' success under Keefe are his willingness to lean on his star players, the much improved special teams, and the new system.
There's no denying that Marner and Matthews have benefitted greatly from the arrival of Sheldon Keefe. In fact, Marner and Matthews logged a combined 48:04 of ice time in Monday's 8-6 win, with the former recording a five-point night. Marner's 24:36 of five-time was the third-highest total of his NHL career.
Meanwhile, Matthews logged 23:28 of ice-time of his own in the home win, and has been absolutely on fire of late, recording 9 points in his last four games - all multi-point games. It's not hard to lean on a guy like Matthews, especially when he is making plays like this:
When it comes to the special teams, the Leafs have improved in both high-danger scoring chances and expected goals with the man-advantage under Keefe, ranking 7th and 8th, respectively, in the NHL. Under Babcock, the Leafs ranked 12th and 9th in those categories.
The penalty kill, however, has shown a vast improvement with Keefe at the helm. The Leafs were 24th in scoring chances against, and 20th in both high danger chances and expected goals against under Babcock. Since Keefe has taken over, the Buds have improved to 8th, 5th and 2nd in the league in those categories.
With regard to the systematic changes, the biggest difference is the amount of point shots the Leafs have attempted under Sheldon Keefe. Babcock was a big believer in generating a good amount of his offense from the point. Unfortunately, that led to a lot of blocked shots and lost puck possession.
Keefe's approach seems to be more cycle-based and focuses on maintaining puck possession to maximize on their chances in the offensive zone rather than just giving up possession on a wild point shot that misses the target or gets blocked on the way to the net.
Whatever Keefe is doing seems to be working for this Leafs team, who now sit second in the Atlantic Division, with a 62.6% chance of making the playoffs, despite only having a 33% chance just a few short weeks ago.
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