Stolarz needs rest, Carlo needs a new partner, and the Leafs need Pinchuk: Leaflets

With all due respect to the current state of the Boston Bruins, Saturday night’s game doesn’t carry the weight of previous matchups.

Last season, the wheels completely came off and it’s clear they are a rebuilding team. Aside from not wanting to suffer the indignity of losing to the lesser Bruins and maybe some faint interest in seeing Brandon Carlo face his former club, the real game of note this weekend comes against the Carolina Hurricanes on Sunday, who will be only the third team the Toronto Maple Leafs have faced that were in the playoffs last season.

And while Toronto’s 8-5-1 record now more adequately reflects the easy of the schedule so far, the Hurricanes will be a good litmus test for where the Leafs are actually at. The Leafs will face the Kings next week and the Canadiens two Saturdays from now for their 22nd game of the season. Essentially, the Leafs will have faced four playoff teams in the first quarter of the season. That’s probably why in the first 14 games there are some significant concerns about the team but it is no longer showing up in the standings.

Is a starter’s workload to blame for Stolarz’ slow start?

The short answer is no. By games two and three, Anthony Stolarz was already having some tough nights.

Is the starter’s workload to blame for why Stolarz hasn’t had an opportunity to get back on track as easily? That’s a question worth exploring.

Stolarz’ eight starts in October tied his busiest month as a Leaf, and in fact ties the busiest month of his career. Like last March when Stolarz played eight games, this October failed to produce a winning record or achieve a .900 save percentage.

After the past couple of seasons of Stolarz being the goals saved above expected darling of the league, his current season sees him sitting at -2.6 goals saved above expected.

He’s also reached his 11th game a full week earlier than he did last season, which isn’t a huge difference, but for a goaltender like Stolarz that is yet to meet the 50% workload of starts in a season in his career, it’s a sign that a bit more rest is required.

It will be interesting to see how Joseph Woll’s return to the Leafs is handled. As much as some rest for Stolarz seems to be in order, throwing Woll to wolves isn’t ideal either. There are durability concerns there too, but depending on how things go in the first couple of games, it won’t be surprising to see Woll take on 2/3rds of the starts for the next little while until Stolarz’s results improve.

Brandon Carlo needs some time on the third pairing

Brandon Carlo hasn’t been it for the Maple Leafs. And to be fair the Maple Leafs are asking a lot of him.

Being Morgan Rielly’s partner is basically asking Carlo to be “the guy” in the defensive zone and given that Morgan Rielly is at his best when playing on the ice with the Leafs top six forwards, generally he attracts a higher level competition as well, meaning Carlo isn’t defending against third or fourth line forwards too often.

Some players, like Luke Schenn or Ron Hainsey seemed to understand the assignment and thrived when playing with Morgan Rielly, but Carlo, like Roman Polak, is proving that it isn’t a universal quality of being a stay-at-home defender that makes things work with Rielly.

The Leafs need a bit of a shakeup and while Craig Berube might be waiting until Chris Tanev returns to give it ago, there’s a case for going early with it and testing Brandon Carlo on the third pairing alongside Oliver Ekman-Larsson.

The duo would looks a lot like a buyer’s remorse pairing but has some potential. You might not want to purposely match that duo against top six forwards but it’s not the end of the world if they are caught out against them. The duo, on paper, would thrive against bottom six forwards and that would be who’d they would primarily face.

At the same time, Philippe Myers has looked better with Morgan Rielly than Carlo did. There might be a greater emphasis of getting them off the ice before the puck returns to the Leafs end, but Myers as “the guy” in the Leafs end hasn’t been any worse than Carlo, while the Leafs have benefited from Rielly-Myers in the other two-thirds of the ice.

Putting Benoit with McCabe as makes that pairing faster than if Carlo was McCabe. It results in a lefty on the wrong side, but there should be much concern about what Benoit does with his stick.

As for the return of Tanev, whether he’s with Rielly or the far more likely scenario of him returning next to McCabe, it leaves the Ekman-Larsson and Carlo pairing intact and seemingly makes the Leafs defence seem more aligned with would work best opposition forwards.

Vitali Pinchuk is a name to know

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on Vitali Pinchuk. What I do know is that if there is a 6’3 23 year old point per game in the KHL centre that Elliotte Friedman is reporting as being interested in playing in North America, the Leafs should be muscling their way to the front of the line to sign this guy when the KHL season wraps up.

The Leafs need to find a way bringing about a modest youth movement will still being comfortable using the draft picks primarily as trade deadline bait than actually selecting prospects. Pinchuk is a way of doing that. Knowing the amount of cap space that teams have to sign their existing free agents and to bid on the underwhelming crop of talent that does make it to NHL free agency, teams that take chances on top overseas talent will possibly be tapping into the best avenue for upgrading, and given that centre will always be a position of need, and Toronto can potentially offer a clear line of sight to playing in the NHL immediately on a playoff bound team, with Mikhail Grabovski just up the road as a potential Belorussian mentor, the Leafs should be on top of this situation and they likely are.