Don’t play fancy when you lack finesse

The biggest reason for the Toronto Maple Leafs struggles this season is a lack of skill. Ask any fan or analyst and they’ll tell you the same thing. Match Toronto’s roster with any other playoff caliber team and you’ll see considerable differences. Simply put, the Leafs don’t have enough quality players to compete in 5 on 5 situations and that’s exactly where they are losing hockey games.

Play to your strengths

A note to the Toronto Maple Leafs: Brian Burke hockey usually doesn't include finesse hockey.

When it’s easily identified your team doesn’t have the talent to match your opponent, each game’s goal should be to keep things simple. The simplest thing to do is to play to your strengths – the lowest common denominator strategy imaginable. I admit it’s a pretty obvious comment, but everything the Leafs do is far more complicated than it needs to be. Here’s a few simple examples:

Breakouts
Forwards taking passes off their skates is a common occurrence in the Leafs breakouts. I have no idea why. Most passes in the neutral zone are good enough to hit sticks yet Leaf forwards insist on kicking/directing pucks from skates to sticks. Look no further than Saturday night in Boston. Why make this harder than it needs to be? (We already know how much trouble the Leafs have making clean and crisp passes). Keep it simple! Over the last few weeks, I’ve lost count how many turnovers this has created. This is the kind of finesse that’s completely unnecessary in the Leafs game. Quite frankly, the Leafs have (at maximum) two forwards skilled enough to do this on a regular basis.

Extra passes
Everyone marvels at how many shots Phil Kessel takes/attempts per game. I don’t see why every forward can’t do the same. Too many Leafs forwards give up good shooting chances for an extra pass and it doesn’t make sense. It’s too fancy. The Leafs should be shooting anything/everything at the net for rebounds, tips, bounces, and more. It’s not pretty, but it’s effective. The Leafs have more truculence than Tiger Woods has transgressions, yet they don’t drive to the net nearly enough to make the most of it. If anything, the Leafs were built for this. Again, keep it simple. The more they can get their big bodies towards/in front of the net with more shots coming through, the more scoring chances they’ll generate. Those extra passes forwards are making risk (and usually result in) turnover opportunities and less Leaf scoring chances.

The moral of the story? Play to your strengths – don’t play fancy when you lack finesse. Taking pucks off skates in the neutral zone isn’t a strength of the Leafs, nor is trying to make ‘Savard-ian’ or ‘Thornton-esque’ passes in shooting lanes. The Leafs lack finesse. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s a reality.

In order for the Leafs to be successful, I think they need to get a better understanding of the skill-set they have and play to it. That sounds like an awfully stupid thing to say after 28 games, but you can’t tell me the Leafs have played to their strengths in the majority of their games this season.

Ironically, I’m off to see the Leafs annual skills competition on Sunday afternoon. Maybe then they can show me how to properly execute these “skills”. I wish I was kidding, I can’t even make this stuff up…

Stay classy, skilled Toronto Maple Leafs.

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Kevin Burgundy is the chief writer for Stayclassy.net. Follow him on Twitter (@Stay_Classy) or email him.