Scott’s Thoughts: “Moore in, Carrick Hurt”

After an exciting win last night over the Chicago Blackhawks, and another game looming tomorrow night against the New Jersey Devils, Babcock continues to shuffle the chairs around on the deck, according to Chris Johnston.

While we usually leave this stuff for the pregame articles, I think there’s a bit more meaning to this than just “Here’s the lineup for tomorrow”. So, what does this mean, this early into the season? Well, there are a few things that we can pull from this.

First off, Babcock continues to be indecisive about who he wants as his fourth line center. He’s rotated between Fehr and Moore thus far, and they both bring different elements to the fourth line. Fehr has been better defensively thus far, and has seen more success when he’s been on the penalty kill in terms of goals (1.67 GA/60 to 12.15 GA/60), but Moore has had better shot suppression numbers on the PK (42.53 CA/60 to 53.63 CA/60), and Fehr has no points thus far, which sounds strange that you’d expect your fourth line center to have a point in three games, but when he’s the only one on the team without a point (not counting Josh Leivo), there’s a bit more logic to it.

At this point, I’d expect Babcock to have a Moore decisive idea as to who will be the full time fourth line center down the road, but for now it’s Fehr to rotate them in and out to see who fits the role better, while also keeping them rested.

Second off, Carrick is out for the second game in a row. While many believe it could be due to an injury, it could be more than that. After all, Carrick wasn’t exactly a guarantee in the lineup last season, and while he was on the second pair, Babcock was more likely to swap him out for Marincin or Corrado (lol) than Polak and Hunwick. Mr. Fancey did a good job illustrating Carrick’s situation last week, but we might be seeing a situation where Borgman and Rosen have outplayed Carrick, and Carrick is on the outside looking in. This could be looked at as a good problem, that we have some defensive depth, or a bad problem, if you think Carrick should be in the lineup over Borgman and Rosen, or even Hainsey and Zaitsev.

Of course, I could be wrong, and Carrick could just be banged up and we’ll see him in the lineup once he’s feeling better.

Finally, amidst all these rotations between all the players that we think don’t have a guaranteed spot, there is one noticeable absence: Matt Martin and Josh Leivo. I’m not going to argue too much about this, because for both your sake and mine, I’m not going to waste any more time on something that in the long run would probably amount to an additional win or two. Would it be nice to have Leivo in the lineup to optimize our offense? Of course, I’d rather have the guy who had 10 points in 13 games than the guy 9 in 82 to do that. Would it be nice to see Babcock at least try a game without Martin in the lineup and Leivo instead? Of course, it’s great to see what you have on the roster. But, has Martin really been a problem on the team? Martin has averaged 6:52 minutes of icetime, has a 53.53% CF% thus far, and even has a point, while the Leafs are 3-0-0, the third best 5v5 Score-Adjusted CF% team, and the best offensive team in the league. While Leivo would make the team slightly better, it’s not enough to have a migraine over a 3-0-0 team.