Are the Maple Leafs asking too much of Jake McCabe?

(Who disconnected Klingberg’s controller?)

Instinctively I want to blame John Klingberg for the decline in McCabe’s numbers and honestly compared to TJ Brodie that drop off is understandable, but the reality is Jake McCabe is used to playing with partners he has to carry defensively. In Chicago his most frequent partner was Seth Jones last season. Jones has a well earned reputation for high event hockey and while he might be more present in the defensive zone than John Klingberg seems to be, he hasn’t been good and certainly doesn’t help from a shot suppression stand point. After that McCabe’s most frequent partners were Jack Johnson and Caleb Jones. Caleb is essentially his brother without any of the upside and Jack Johnson’s struggles with playing defence at an NHL level have been well documented in recent years. John Klingberg is pretty much the norm for McCabe.

So what does make things better on this front for McCabe? He won’t be partnered with Brodie in the regular season good, but continuing on as bad as things have been for the first couple of games isn’t really an option either.

Time will obviously help and familiarity will help, both with Mike Van Ryn as a defensive coach, Klingberg as a partner, and for the Leafs goaltenders to settle into the net as well. If things don’t go as smoothly or as quickly as the Leafs would like on that front maybe it is a matter of looking at McCabe seeing more time with Liljegren and Toronto finding a way of sheltering both Giordano and Klingberg a bit more. Not necessarily making them a disastrous third pairing, but recognizing the times in the game when it is more beneficial to play McCabe and Liljegren together. It also seems possible that situationally we might see McCabe and Brodie together for tough assignments while shuffling Rielly over to Liljegren in the process but I can’t imagine there is too much appetite to do anything too drastic while the season is still in the “let’s see what we’ve got” stages.

The other thing to look at is whether McCabe is someone who can handle that 5v5 workload. The last time McCabe average 20:43 in all situations ice time was when he was 23. He’s 30 now and his body is different and compared to previous years he is seeing a lot more of that time during the harder 5v5 shifts. I’m not sure the Leafs have a lot of places to turn for taking his minutes, but in theory if Toronto revisits their 11 forward, 7 defenceman model from late last season there could be some relief.

Reality is the Leafs don’t have a lot of places they can turn for making McCabe’s life easier. He’s the guy they are counting on to play the best hockey of his career to justify a lot of other question marks on their blueline and working him into the ground as their physical blueline presence is going to be what happens. Help will likely be on the way for the Leafs blueline at some point because it pretty much has to be, but even with that the Leafs cap and asset situation means it is going to be more of a supporting role rather than someone who can do similar work to what is being asked of Jake McCabe.

Data sourced from Natural Stat Trick