Kyle Dubas confirms big changes coming for the Leafs in 2021

Leafs reporter Kristen Shilton with a big scoop from the Leafs' front office.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 3 years ago
Kyle Dubas confirms big changes coming for the Leafs in 2021
Zuma Press

TSN Toronto Maple Leafs insider Kristen Shilton recently caught up with Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas to talk about the state of the franchise and the tough task they face in front of them with the prospect of playing in an all-Canadian division for 2021.

One interesting tidbit that Shilton uncovered in her interview with Dubas is the fact that Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe plans on mimicking Tampa Bay Lightning coach John Cooper's strategy of dressing seven defencemen and 11 forwards for each contest, rather than the traditional 6 defencemen and 12 forwards format.

Dubas explains the impact that he thinks this big change can have:

I think it does a couple things. Number one, it creates a real difficult matchup up front, because you’re either going to be really running your top three lines a lot or when your fourth line comes back again, you’re going to have a member of the first line back on that fourth line, so it’s going to make it a little more potent. In our case, that’s [adding] Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, John Tavares and William Nylander [back in]. We think the depth of our D really lends itself to this [as well], and I wouldn’t be surprised to see us use it from time to time during the season.

It's a strategy that Dubas and Keefe used during their time with the AHL's Toronto Marlies and one that ultimately led to a Calder Cup championship in 2015-16. Dubas admits though that the strategy came from Cooper and his successful run in the AHL with the Norfolk Admirals.

"We just probably felt the depth of our defence was better than what we were getting from our forward group and we called Jon because [Tampa] had been doing [7-11] a lot back then in 2015 when they went to the [Stanley] Cup Final and then in 2016, ’17, and all the way through; they’d never been afraid to do that.”

The strategy makes sense in theory, but the Leafs are lacking one pretty important ingredient in all this: Victor Hedman. Or rather, a "Victor Hedman" type player on the back-end. Nevertheless, it's encouraging to see teams implementing new and innovative strategies.