Jon Cooper is outcoaching Sheldon Keefe for a second straight year. But it’s not too late to change that

Matt Larkin
Matt Larkin(MLarkinHockey)
Jon Cooper is outcoaching Sheldon Keefe for a second straight year. But it’s not too late to change that
Credit: Sheldon Keefe (© Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports)

Does Sheldon Keefe see it?

He must. Every fan in attendance for the Maple Leafs / Lightning series has. The TV viewers and panelists have. The pundits have.

Justin Holl is getting roasted like a campfire marshmallow in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The latest in a long succession of scapegoat Leaf blueliners is putting the likes of Aki Berg and Jake Gardiner to shame. With Holl on the ice in the first five games of the series, the Lightning have outscored the Leafs 14-2. With Holl off the ice, the score is 18-4 Toronto. Of course Holl’s presence on the penalty kill and absence on the power play skew the numbers, but even at 5-on-5 the score is 9-2 Tampa with Holl on the ice. The Lightning get 81.82 percent of total goals scored when No. 3 is out there.

Asked about it after the Leafs’ deflating Game 5 home defeat, in which they lost their 11th straight playoff game in which they could eliminate their opponent, Keefe pointed out that Holl is “not alone” on the ice. It’s true that Holl’s partner, Mark Giordano, has struggled at times in the series too; the Bolts hold an 8-3 edge at 5-on-5 with him out there. But any coach refusing to acknowledge Holl’s disastrous series is either deploying blind loyalty toward his troops or just, uh, blind.

The Leafs are now 12 games into a two-year playoff battle against the Tampa Bay Lightning, and I have to wonder just how much Keefe sees, how capable he is at making adjustments for his team. Because his counterpart, Jon Cooper, is about as good as anyone at doing so.

Take the 2022 series. The Leafs had the NHL’s No. 1 power play in the regular season, and the Bolts found a way to bottle it up, holding it to a 14.3 percent efficiency. The Leafs didn’t score a power-play goal in Game 6 or 7. In the deciding game, Tampa doubled up on them in shots blocked to boot. As the series changed and the Lightning fell behind, they found a way to limit Toronto’s strengths and turned the tide of the series.

This year? Cooper and the Bolts put on a coaching clinic in Game 5. Remember all the talk about the blocker-side weakness and screened point shots beating Vasilevskiy? In his post-game presser, Cooper wryly alluded to the criticism, pointing out that ‘Vasy’ proved everyone wrong, but look closer at this remarkable shot chart circulated by my colleague Mike McKenna on Twitter. Tampa pretty much prevented Toronto from getting any looks in Vasilevskiy’s danger zone in Game 5. They forced the Leafs to alter their method of attack.

Tampa went to work on a tangible adjustment and changed its fate. The Leafs, meanwhile, have been badly outplayed territorially in the past three games of the series, holding scoring chance shares of 35 percent, 35 percent and 40 percent. They have not figured out a way to maintain their offensive zone time, and they’ve badly struggled breaking the puck out of their zone.

And yet Keefe, armed with nine NHL defensemen at his disposal, has refused to touch his top six, even when one pair is getting caved in at an almost historic rate.

He did imply the possibility of some changes for Game 6 during his availability Friday, suggesting, “there are some injuries and things that have to play out throughout the day.” That could be accurate; it could also be protecting an ego of a player he wants to remove from the lneup. Too early to say.

But so far, the only meaningful decision Keefe has made in this series has been to keep left winger Michael Bunting out in Game 5 after he was eligible to return from his three-game suspension. I personally supported that line of thinking, but it backfired. Perhaps we see Bunting back in for Game 6, but in terms of adjustments, that’s the low-hanging fruit. Is Keefe willing to make a bolder move and, for instance, swap Timothy Liljegren in for Holl? If Keefe waits until Game 7, it might be too big of an ask for Liljegren to enter a do-or-die game cold. So why not try him for Game 6? What’s the worst that could happen: Liljegren being on the ice for every Tampa goal? Holl was in Game 5. There’s nowhere to go but up.

Whatever transpires, be it a tweak to the Leafs’ forechecking scheme or some personnel shuffling on defense to assist with breakouts and D-zone coverage, it’s clear Keefe has to do something. Be proactive, not reactive. Otherwise, we’re looking at a déjà vu in which the two-time Stanley Cup winner Cooper coaches circles around Keefe again. That’s not a recipe for Toronto winning a series.

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