TORONTO – For the second straight game, the Toronto Maple Leafs will face one of the most dynamic and most stacked lines in hockey.
And for the second straight game, the weighty task of shutting down a trio of all-star-calibre forwards will fall to the John Tavares and wingmen Mitch Marner and Zach Hyman.
"They’re getting the call tonight," said Leafs coach Mike Babcock ahead of Monday’s tilt with the top-heavy Colorado Avalanche. "The appeal is, I’m doing what I can to win the game, and I think they’re right now playing our best."
From both opponents’ perspective, much can be read into a duel that features the only full line heading to the NHL’s All-Star game later this month.
Mikko Rantanen (third overall with 68 points), Nathan MacKinnon (fifth, 66), and Gabriel Landeskog (19th, 51) each rank among the league’s top-20 scorers. Combined, the terrorizing trio has piled up 185 points, thrusting them ahead of the second-most-productive threesome in Calgary (179 points) despite Colorado mustering just one victory over its past 10 outings.
"Landeskog is a real good finisher, strong on the puck and good in a lot of areas that maybe you don’t notice. MacKinnon [brings] a dynamic ability with the puck, his skating, his shot. And Rantanen’s hockey sense and playmaking ability is one of the best in the league," explains Tavares of the Snickers bar of forward lines. Peanuts, caramel, chocolate. "They just got a good blend of everything."
Ditto Boston’s in-stone No. 1 unit of Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak.
But there is an intriguing philosophical coaching divide here, and it’s the reason, say, Auston Matthews has never skated alongside Marner. It’s why Edmonton is forever scratching its head over whether it’s best to deploy Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl together or apart.
Do you disperse your most dangerous weapons and attack in waves, or do you load up and blitz your enemy?
"Whatever works best for their team. The team that’s running away with hockey, though? It’s not what they’re doing. They just spread it out. They’ve got good players on every line," notes Babcock, who loves Hyman in his top six.
"Those are the ones that tend to play a long time in the spring, too."
The man has a point.
Chicago only sporadically deployed Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews simultaneously during its mini dynasty. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin have swung a staggered one-two punch to glory. And last spring Washington’s Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom operated separately, and, hey, look, Tom Wilson is a top-liner. Depth affords options.
It’s of little secret that the Tampa Bay Lightning, who sprinkle scorers throughout its top nine, is viewed internally as the blueprint, the standard for Toronto to top this season.
"Tampa spreads it out fairly well. I think we spread it out fairly well. It depends maybe the way the team’s built or the way they’re looking to play. Sometimes you get three guys that click so well together, it’s hard to not do that," said Tavares, who sees the advantage of rolling three skill lines.
"It makes it that much harder to play against. Over the course of 60 minutes, you’d like to think you can wear a team down that way and find a way to get opportunities."
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And yet: Avalanche coach Jared Bednar is bullish on his bully line, which he trots out for more than 60 per cent of offensive-zone draws and is counting on to dig Colorado out of its worst malaise of the season.
"I still like playing them together," Bednar says. "They’re one of the best lines in the league if not the best line in the league. If we’re going to get out of this thing, we’re going to lean on those guys heavily, and that’s what we’re intending to do here."
Bednar occasionally double-shifts his all-stars with other units and has experimented with breaking them up for a period here and there at home. But otherwise he essentially won’t mess with a good thing, even in bad times.
"We keep coming back to those guys as a group," Bednar said. "They like playing together. They’re excited about playing together every night. They put a lot of responsibility on themselves. It’s been working for us."
Landeskog-MacKinnon-Rantanen is good thing that certainly feels and accepts the pressure to produce. If they’re not flying, the Avs are stuck. While in Toronto, a scoring drought to Nazem Kadri or Auston Matthews may fly under the radar for a week.
Consider that the Avalanche’s top line averages 21:30 per game, roughly five more minutes than their second line and two-and-half minutes more than Tavares & Co.
"The biggest thing is you like each other off-ice. That makes it easier on each other," Rantanen says.
Captain Landeskog said as much as the chemistry is clicking, he’d be "more than willing" to try a revamped top-six if the coaching staff wished.
MacKinnon takes it a step further. He said it "would probably be a good thing" to tinker with a split.
"It’d be good to spread it out. We tried it a little bit this year, and we just kept coming back to the three of us," MacKinnon said.
"We tried it at home for a few periods, and it was OK, but Bedsy just put us back together. It’s definitely something we should try in the future, especially if we don’t win here."
