With the trade deadline fast approaching, the one big question on everyone’s mind is what the Toronto Maple Leafs need to add to help improve their team.

They have had a strong season to this point, spending a good portion of the campaign atop the Atlantic Division and are currently a point behind the Florida Panthers with two games in hand. The Leafs are in a prime position to once again clinch a playoff spot though it remains unclear who they would be facing given how tight things have gotten in the Eastern Conference in recent weeks.

As a result, General Manager Brad Treliving has plenty of work to do over the next few weeks to make the necessary adjustments before the deadline passes on March 7th. He has made it clear that he would like to add a centre, though there are also growing concerns about the team needing another option on defence.

Hockey Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman made an appearance on Leafs Morning Take with Nick Alberga and Carter Hutton on Wednesday where he gave his perspective on where he thinks the Leafs can improve. He agreed that Toronto needs another option down the middle to help ease the load off Auston Matthews and John Tavares in defensive crunch time while giving Craig Berube more options to work with.

“ You know, you’d like to see a shutdown line. That’s the only thing I would say to [Berube]. Maybe he doesn’t have the personnel, I don’t know all the personnel right down to the end,” he said. “ The good teams seem to always have that one line that you really depend on. And I noticed last night late in the game, Matthews was on quite a long time in the last couple of minutes. Tavares was out with him, that would be for a face-off, obviously.”

Bowman also mentioned that the Leafs could benefit from getting another experienced defenceman to solidify their depth on the backend in preparation for a deep playoff run.

Concerns about the Leafs being too top-heavy are nothing new, especially this season when they have four players making over $10 million in AAV. The core four certainly have the talent to provide quality play, and it’s hard to contain them when on their game, but that results in the supporting cast not quite being up to par. That naturally leads to moments where the top guys are leaned on a lot and there are concerns they will be fatigued by the time the playoffs roll around because they were used so much during the regular season.

It therefore makes sense why Bowman suggests forming a formidable shutdown line would be a wise decision for the Leafs given there are flaws with their bottom-six lines. Acquiring a two-way centre near the deadline could certainly help mitigate that and getting the right pieces to fit together will go a long way in giving the team more depth and making them tougher to play against.

One thing that Bowman thinks the Leafs won’t have to worry too much about is their goalie. He considers it to be the most consistent they have had in quite some time, though he wondered how they will handle the playoff workload.

“ I think they’re in as good a shape as they’ve been. They haven’t been in this good shape on the goaltending. I like both goalies so far in what they’ve done this year,” he said. “You get into playoffs and you don’t know if one can carry the ball all the time. Probably not with these two because they haven’t had a lot of long playoff runs and that’s something that they’d have to keep an eye on.”

Anthony Stolarz is fresh off winning a Stanley Cup with the Florida Panthers, but he was the backup behind Sergei Bobrovsky and only got into one playoff game during that run. Joseph Woll has a bit more playoff experience overall, though he was not the Leafs’ first choice in the two postseason appearances. Ilya Samsonov got the nod both times because of Woll’s inexperience the first year and him recovering from injury the second.

There are certainly questions about whether this goalie tandem can help guide the team on a deep playoff run due to their lack of experience in the postseason and injury concerns. If Berube goes to the rotation as he has done throughout the year when the two were healthy, perhaps it is possible to offset the fears and prove that you can win a Stanley Cup with two goalies.

Although there are certainly some areas he feels the Leafs need to get better at, Bowman feels the Leafs have a good shot with Berube behind the bench.

“Berube’s got experience in the playoffs. He took a team from nowhere and won a Cup and beat a good team. And when you win a seventh game, he’s a pretty confident guy,” he said. “They’ve got enough scoring. As long as they can work on their shutdown game, that’s to me what is important. And he’s obviously doing it because yesterday that they practiced it. They haven’t been as happy with their goalie-out situation by the opposition.  I don’t know how you practice it because, boy, it’s tough to defend those six on five, and then if you get a penalty, and you know, your face-off is crucial.”

“But I like their team because they don’t seem to really have to worry about scoring as much as some teams, and that’s a big factor.  They can just tighten up the last stretch of the season and that’s what they have to do in the playoffs.”

In the meantime, the Leafs will continue to work with what they have and make the most out of it until the upgrades arrive to help shore up the depth. One player they feel good about being a positive secondary contributor is Bobby McMann, who set a new career high in goals when he scored against the Calgary Flames for his 16th of the season.

Bowan thinks role players like McMann are critical to any aspiring playoff-bound team because they will be fresher when the postseason begins and help provide the spark when the team needs it.

“ This boy’s come out of nowhere.  Quite a story with him. I have a good friend of mine that’s a high-class doctor in Buffalo,” he said. “His son – Ben Sharf – his best friend is Bobby McMann and they went to Colgate together. I had lunch one day with the doctor and his son. Ben didn’t go on to a college career, he owns a business now in New York City, but his best friend is Bobby McMann, and I met him and he had a cast on his leg. I couldn’t believe it, now he’s an NHL player.”

You can watch the full interview with Scotty Bowman down below: