This has been a notably better week for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Last week included moments against the Blue Jackets, Blues, and even the Bruins that were beginning to spark some premature questions about the state of the Maple Leafs. This week has brought convincing wins against the red hot Jets and the Kraken. As a result, November will start on an optimistic note.

Throw in a somewhat significant move in shipping out Timothy Liljegren and there is plenty to touch on in this week’s edition of Leaflets.

I’ll start with my personal view of Timothy Liljegren and that is he was one of the more capable defencemen in the Maple Leafs lineup and through playing style, lack of trust, occasional health issues, and a notable decline after a hot start to the 2023-24 season, it was only a matter of time before the Leafs made the decision to move on from a $3M defenceman that wasn’t meeting their needs. This was the right call for the Leafs, and the right call for Liljegren.

From Liljegren’s perspective he is getting a golden opportunity to play a bigger role on a team that needs help. There are solid veterans he can learn from, but at least in the short term he can push for top pairing minutes before becoming a top four on the Sharks as they improve. Along with Mario Ferraro he’s one of their better puck movers and could see some powerplay time which might get into Liljegren’s untapped potential.

From the Leafs’ perspective, ridding themselves of $3M sitting in their press box is a win. And while Liljegren is a former 1st round pick, the emphasis should be put on former. Gaining cap space as well as 3rd round pick and 6th round pick is a worthwhile return.

The Leafs also acquired Matt Benning, a somewhat useful player but one that seems destined to slot in behind Conor Timmins, Jani Hakanpaa, and Philippe Myers. That seems to point to his time being short with the Leafs, but that also points to either another asset via trade or additional cap space created by placing the defenceman on waivers.

As much as seeing Liljegren going might be a little disappointing, this was a solid deal for the Leafs and seems to be a minimal imposition of depth while helping with roster flexibility.

Just as Liljegren’s departure created the cap space required for the returns of Hakanpaa and Dewar, both players were put on conditioning stints with the Marlies signaling their return to the Leafs in around two weeks.

While cap compliance no longer seems like an issue, there is the matter of getting two players off the active roster to be compliant in regard to roster size.

One of the likely solutions is that two weeks equals seven games where injuries could potentially take a toll and there could be utilization of either the injured reserve (no cap relief, but roster space relief) or LTIR (cap and roster relief). No one is hoping for injuries being the solution, but the reality of the NHL is that injuries do occur and are a possible path to getting Hakanpaa and Dewar back on the NHL roster.

The other option out there is waivers, and the two most likely candidates for waivers at this point are probably Myers and Benning, as the depth defencemen. There is no guarantee that either will clear waivers especially as other teams experience wear and tear on their bluelines, so there might be a reluctance to go down this path, especially with Myers, who Berube seems to value.

I’m less confident in saying who could be considerations for waivers when looking at the forward group, but I’d always say that Ryan Reaves deserves more consideration in this regard as he would likely clear and non-rostering him would be a fairly easy way of keeping an enforcer on standby.

Players like David Kampf, Ryan Reaves, and Pontus Holmberg all make some sense when considering potential trades as well. Matt Benning is someone that Brad Treliving could also be trying to flip quickly in order to make additional space. The player that seems most likely when talking about trades though is probably Nick Robertson, who despite showing promise (again) in the preseason, hasn’t turned it into regular season success and potentially there is someone out there who thinks they can get more out of him. The return might be underwhelming for the Leafs but Toronto might value the roster space over the player at this point.

It seems that just as the Maple Leafs get this situation figured out, there will be a need to do it all over again with Calle Jarnkrok. I’m sure that having some time to take a look at Hakanpaa and Dewar and what they can do in Craig Berube’s lineup before making a decision on Jarnkrok is a situation the Leafs are happy to have, as overhauling too much of the lineup a month into the season might rock the boat.

I’m not normally one for stats before the 20th game of the season. It’s a combination of a small sample size and relies a lot on a time of the season when everyone is still figuring themselves out. Game 20, all bets are off, and numbers start meaning a lot.

That said, I’m often hypocritical and I’m going to talk about a couple of numbers that bother me. It’s 15 and 13. Those are the shot totals for Auston Matthews and John Tavares respectively on the powerplay. The next highest number is six from Morgan Rielly.

Looking at shot attempts tells a similar story. Matthews has 23 shot attempts while Tavares has 18. William Nylander is the next closest at 12 attempts. Those are also the three power play goal scorers this season in 34 opportunities.

Getting the puck to Matthews and Tavares makes sense, but it is seemingly happening to a fault and has overly relegated Marner and Nylander to puck moving roles. Throw in other offensively talented forwards like Pacioretty, and Domi, along with strong offensive defencemen like Rielly and Ekman-Larsson it seems that variety should be a strength on the powerplay and having half the shots come from two players is giving the opposition a blueprint for their penalty killing coverage.

Part of the solution should be continuing the idea of exploring having two strong powerplay units instead of one overloaded one. The second unit hasn’t been set up for success and the Leafs haven’t taken advantage of the fact that Matthew Knies can be strong net presence on the top unit, freeing John Tavares up for playing a bigger role on the second unit. Taking away Tavares as a first line shooter encourages more shooting from Nylander, and the Marner-Matthews-Knies-Nylander dynamic can be mirrored heavily by Domi-McMann-Tavares-Pacioretty on the second unit.

The Leafs’ 8.8% success rate on the powerplay is second lowest in the NHL. Considering that they had a 4.8% powerplay in the playoffs last spring, and since February 22nd (the past 38 regular season games) the Leafs have had the worst powerplay in the NHL at 12.5%.

As difficult as it is to say don’t pass the puck to Auston Matthews on the powerplay, perhaps the Leafs can benefit from being slightly less predictable.