The Toronto Maple Leafs have seen continuous improvement since Mike Babcock took over behind the bench in the summer of 2015, but one area he hadn’t been able to fix internally was the fourth line.
With the way the Maple Leafs are constructed, Babcock leans towards using the fourth line as essentially sacrificial lambs on defensive zone starts to free up his top-nine that’s loaded with talented goal scorers. Unfortunately, that hasn’t looked so great with current fourth line centre Ben Smith doing that job.
While Smith is on the ice, the Maple Leafs have controlled just 39.1 per cent of goals, and 42.2 per cent of shot attempts. That’s simply not good enough, so GM Lou Lamoriello went to the struggling Lightning and acquired 32-year-old Brian Boyle, a 6-foot-6 beast for a second round draft pick in 2017 and Byron Froese.
It looks like a high price to pay for a fourth liner — although it’s no first round pick for Paul Gaustad — but the Maple Leafs have the luxury of a full cabinet of prospects. They can afford to lose a pick in what is considered to be a weak draft more than most teams, in exchange for immediate help. And make no mistake Boyle is a huge upgrade.
The contrast between these two players in terms of driving play and goals is astonishing, helped by Boyle having arguably the best year of his career, but even if you adjust for bad luck on Smith’s part and good luck on Boyle’s part, Corsica.Hockey’s xGoals metric has a 7.62 per cent swing in on-ice goals to the positive with Boyle taking over Smith’s duties.
Boyle does turn the puck over a bit more often than does Smith, but part of the reason for that is Boyle makes more high leverage plays, which we’ll get to in a bit.
What strikes me about Boyle is that he doesn’t necessarily make the plays you expect to drive great shot attempt differentials. He dumps the puck out of his zone a lot, dumps the puck in to the attacking zone a lot, and he misses on lots of passes. Boyle isn’t the greatest skater, so trying to rush the puck himself wouldn’t be very smart. Instead, he likes to keep things simple, and the positive in that is his success rates on those simple plays are excellent.
On average, nearly 40 per cent of dump out attempts in the NHL fail to clear the defensive zone, but Boyle’s failure rate on those is just under half that, as he clears the zone on more than 80 per cent of his attempts. It’s a small thing, but for a line that will be used in a role heavily tilted towards the defensive zone, that stuff matters.
However when it comes to driving play, it’s tough to see from those stats how Boyle does it, so let’s look at his individual plays.
While Ben Smith’s contributions are almost entirely on the defensive side, partly because he so rarely has the puck, Boyle drives play with a rare amount of offence for a fourth line player.
Boyle is an above average scoring chance and shot producer, using his size to his advantage in creating space for himself close to the net, something that has earned him semi-consistent power play time throughout his career, and led to three straight 13-plus goal seasons in his early-30s.
He isn’t much of a playmaker, below average in generating scoring chances for teammates, but he’s nearly twice as good at it as Smith.
Where Boyle struggles a bit is winning the puck away from opponents. He’s below team and league average in loose puck recoveries in every zone, and successful defensive plays (shot and pass blocks, stick and body checks). That suggests that when he’s chasing the play, he’s a bit behind, but he makes up for that deficiency with his play with the puck.
Boyle isn’t a high impact forward, but this is a perfect example of a team addressing a pressing need. The Maple Leafs are not likely to be contenders for the Stanley Cup this spring, but they aren’t just first round fodder either, they’re a team to be taken seriously.
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