Mirtle: Carlyle calls out Leafs top line after stinker against Devils

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It's not a new problem.

But when the Toronto Maple Leafs win, they're three players who get a lot of the credit, because their names are on the scoresheet next to the goals and assists columns.

When the Leafs lose, they rarely seem to get the blame, with that falling on the beleaguered defencemen or goalies who are left to mop up when things go wrong.

That wasn't how it went down on Thursday, though. No, the Leafs first line took the brunt of the 5-3 loss in the blame department, with coach Randy Carlyle making it pretty clear why they had played so little against the Devils.

Tyler Bozak, Phil Kessel and James van Riemsdyk were sitting to think about what they had done.

Or hadn't done, really.

"I didn't think our top line was very good," Carlyle said, bluntly. "And those minutes showed that."

Part of this was credit to the opponent. These three players can look great against a team like Dallas, that has struggled mightily defensively of late, as they are so dangerous when given enough looks at the net.

New Jersey doesn't typically do that, no matter who's in the lineup (and they had an odd cast on this night that included the likes of Mike Sislo and Seth Helgeson). You can call it the trap if you like, but what it was was disciplined hockey by a team desperate to win on the road and it worked well for coach Peter DeBoer, who badly needed this kind of effort given his team had won only three times in its last 14 games.

That type of game is the antithesis of what the Leafs top trio is, and it's why they can disappear in games.

It's also a big part of Toronto's possession problem at even strength.

Overall, the Leafs have made strides in this department. Their second and third lines have controlled play well enough – and their fourth line has been less of a black hole – that they were up to 46.4 per cent score-adjusted possession heading into Thursday's game.

While not great (the league average is 50 per cent), it's a big jump from last year's 42.2 per cent.

Against the Devils, the Leafs even won the possession battle at even strength, generating 55 per cent of the shot attempts. The Peter Holland-centred third line was particularly effective, as they were in the 70 per cent range despite eating a lot of defensive zone starts.

The first line? All under 40 per cent, including Kessel (31 per cent) and Bozak (32) in the team basement.

In fact, without Kessel/Bozak on the ice, Toronto had a 65 per cent possession game – dominant by league standards and unheard of by Leaf ones.

This wasn't because the first unit had tough minutes or assignments. Their zone starts were all at 50 per cent or better; their most commonly faced opponent was a no-name third line of Tuomo Ruutu, Jacob Josefson and Sislo.

But in about six minutes of ice time, Toronto's top line didn't generate a single shot against those three.

Mostly because they couldn't get out of their end. Or into the Devils'.

"It seemed like any time we got to the blueline, it was contested," van Riemsdyk said. "We didn't make simple plays."

"Well, the thing is with that line, they need to simplify on nights like tonight," Carlyle said, going on a long soliloquy when asked about the process of getting these three to play better defensively. "And go into more of a structured game where instead of having to play in the [defensive] zone for the majority of the shift, try and be a little more structured and support the puck, make stronger plays so they can get in the offensive zone.

"It's a lot easier for that group to play in the offensive zone than it is the defensive zone. And that's the process of learning when you're playing the opposition [like this]. They were dominating us along the walls and winning the puck battles. So there's a method to break that. That is to make sure you get your fair share of pucks in [deep] and don't extend your shifts so we get fresh people out there.

"That's what happened. They'd extend the shift in our zone and we'd have to change right away. We didn't have a chance to get much offence going as a line."

Say what you will about the Devils issues, but on a lot of nights, they're well coached in the x's and o's side of things. They had a skeletal roster without Patrik Elias, Jaromir Jagr, Travis Zajac, Ryane Clowe, etc., but it didn't matter because they knew how to limit the players responsible for a lot of Toronto's offence to very little.

Don't take penalties. Don't let them do anything off the rush.

Be safe. Be smart. And they won't know what to do.

We hear an awful lot about how many points these three have for the Leafs all the time, but the reality is they're hurting them in games like this. Kessel is a minus player this year, despite being on pace for nearly 90 points. JVR is also a minus, despite the fact he's on pace for a career high 30 goals.

Plus-minus is a terrible stat generally speaking (and especially in small sample sizes) but the reason to point it out is it aligns over the very long term with what's happening possession-wise with this group.

In the 155 games the Leafs have played since acquiring JVR, he is a minus player. At 5-on-5, he and Kessel have been on the ice for the most goals on the team (113 and 114), an average of about three goals against every four games.

And Bozak and JVR are in the bottom 20 out of the 320 NHL forwards with 1,000 minutes ice time in even strength goals against per minute over the last three seasons.

If you look at big minutes forwards, they're also outshot more than almost every one that doesn't play for Buffalo.

Yes, the Leafs top line scores a lot. But they're often giving back as much as they get.

This on a team that has had pretty solid goaltending over this span.

One last point on this: If you pull out special teams, the Leafs top point getters at even strength this season have actually been Kessel (17 points), Mike Santorelli (14), Leo Komarov (13) and Nazem Kadri (13).

Given their minutes, and the fact they play with Kessel, it's notable that Bozak and JVR are at only 12 even strength points and well down the list in 5-on-5 points per minute.

The Leafs really only have two solutions on this issue. Either they can break up this line or they can give it easier minutes, starting them in the offensive zone more and away from top competition as much as possible.

A third option – getting them to play better defensively – hasn't worked for a while, especially if we consider Ron Wilson was trying for the same out of the Bozak-Kessel duo way back when Joffrey Lupul was still on that line.

"We're looking for overall balance," Wilson said in January of 2012, when he broke up his top line six weeks before he was let go. "Balance between offence and defence. We've got to keep more pucks out of our net – not make silly mistakes that result in a goal against.

"We have to work harder to get pucks in our zone… It's six guys on the ice trying to keep the puck out of the net. It's not one guy and maybe throw in two defencemen."

Two and a half years later, that's a fight the Leafs are still waging on nights like Thursday.