Just How Low Is The Maple Leafs' Scoring From Morgan Rielly And Their Defense?

Despite the uncertain future of the Toronto Maple Leafs' "Core Four," they're there for a reason.

Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner and John Tavares have always been expected to do the heavy lifting on offense. Investing more than half of the team's cap hit into four forwards will bring those high demands, especially when the Maple Leafs only invested 25 percent of their cap in defensemen.

The Maple Leafs have historically had low scoring from their defensemen in the Core Four era. But this season looks even lower.

Toronto has the highest percentage of goals scored by their forwards in the NHL, at 92.8 percent. Conversely, Toronto has the NHL’s fewest goals (11) and lowest goal total percentage (7.2 percent) coming from defensemen. Even for points, only 20.3 percent come from D-men, the second-lowest percentage in the league.

If those percentages hold up through the end of the season, they'll be the lowest for the team in the salary cap era. Considering the Leafs' 3.17 goals-for per game is also on track to be the lowest since 2016-17 – their 11th-overall rank being their worst since 2015-16 – it's not unreasonable to wonder what's going on for offense from their defense.

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The Maple Leafs have two current blueliners with a points-per-game average of 0.40 or better – No. 1 D-man Morgan Rielly (22 points in 48 games, 0.46 points per game) and first-year Leaf Oliver Ekman-Larsson (19 points in 47 games, 0.40 points per game).

Rielly’s on pace for 37 points, which is well below his output of 58 points in 72 games last season, and that was still only the third-highest total of his NHL career.

This drop-off in offensive production hasn’t been evened out by Ekman-Larsson or any other Leafs defenseman, either. But that's not shocking.

There’s no question that Toronto GM Brad Treliving remade his team’s defense corps by adding players – including Ekman-Larsson and Chris Tanev – whose primary function is to keep the puck out of the Leafs’ net.

With a couple of other Maple Leafs D-men already in place beyond last season – Jake McCabe, Simon Benoit and Conor Timmins – Toronto’s focus has been on tightening things up in the defensive zone. They're averaging 2.85 goals against per game, which isn't their best rate in recent years but is better than the 3.18 per game they allowed last year.

But the relative lack of offensive production from their defensemen puts all the more pressure on their forwards to score, whether the Core Four is on the ice or not.

"Coming in, with the way we wanted to play and do things defensively to become a better defensive hockey team that can keep the puck out of our net, we have asked (Rielly) for less risk in his game," Leafs coach Craig Berube told reporters on Monday. "He is trying to do that and has done that, for the most part, but we also need him to produce offensively."

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To be sure, even if Treliving did want to bring in more offense-minded talent on ‘D,’ where would he start? There aren't many options on the trade market waiting to post all kinds of points for a team that acquires them. A former Leaf, veteran John Klingberg, just signed with the Edmonton Oilers, but even then, there’s no assurance Klingberg will step in after missing so many games with injuries and start racking points up by the dozens. He didn't do it in Toronto.

We should expect, then, that Toronto is more or less stuck with the defensemen they have. If they’re going to take pressure off the Core Four and the Leafs’ forwards in general, they’re either going to need Rielly or Ekman-Larsson to begin piling up assists, or they’re going to need McCabe, Benoit, Tanev and Timmins to make sizeable jumps in production.

We know the realistic expectation here – it’s on Rielly and Ekman-Larsson to improve their points totals. If they can do that, those two blueliners will allow Toronto’s other defensemen to continue focusing on playing solid defense before they deal with any other element of the game. The latest defense pairing of Rielly and McCabe was promising on Monday.

Ideally, the Leafs would want an offensive attack that is more balanced between their forwards and defensemen. But given the makeup of the defense corps, it’s considerably less likely they will get more offense out of their defensemen anytime soon. The Leafs’ forwards are well-paid to provide enough offense to carry the rest of the team, which means Toronto’s defensemen will take a back seat to the forwards in terms of point production.

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