The Toronto Maple Leafs are making significant changes to their struggling power play less than a week after firing Marc Savard for the unit’s failures.
Major tweaks were made to the No. 1 unit ahead of Saturday’s game against the Ottawa Senators.
Most notable: New positions for William Nylander, Auston Matthews and John Tavares, stars who have all struggled to score on the power play this season.
Nylander will slide from a spot on the left flank into the bumper position. Matthews is moving from his longtime gig on the right flank, where his one-timer was once weaponized, to the high left flank.
It appears the Leafs captain is likely to roam from just inside the blue line next to Morgan Rielly at the top and generate downward momentum for shooting opportunities from there.
Rounding out the top unit are Matias Maccelli, playing a facilitator’s role from the right flank, and Tavares, who moves back to his longtime net-front role from the bumper spot.
“Sometimes doing something different obviously can just give you a different feel, a different sense of things,” Tavares said.
Fresh off the three-day Christmas break, the team practised the new PP1 formation at the beginning and end of Saturday’s morning skate.
Derek Lalonde oversaw the operation and will lead it in the interim following Savard’s dismissal.
Head coach Craig Berube indicated that Steve Sullivan, who joined the coaching staff from the Marlies on Friday, will eventually take over those duties from Lalonde, who already runs the team’s penalty kill.
Berube said the Leafs were looking for a new voice and different setups.
“We don’t need to complicate anything right now,” Berube said. “We need to get some feel back on the power play and get some chemistry going here with units we have.”
The second power-play unit will feature Matthew Knies in the bumper, Bobby McMann on the right flank, Max Domi on the left flank, Nic Roy at the net and Oliver Ekman-Larsson at the top.
The Leafs (16-15-5) have scored a league-low 12 power-play goals this season. They are 2 for 29 in December.
Savard, the assistant coach who had run the unit previously, was fired early Monday evening amid those woes.
Nylander has scored only two power-play goals and has gone the last 13 games without even one.
His last such goal came on Nov. 22.
Tavares has gone 21 straight games without a power-play goal and has only one in his last 30. He last scored a power-play goal on Nov. 8.
Matthews leads the team with three power-play goals, but scored only once in his first 24 games.
“Ultimately, we’re all judged by our results,” Leafs general manager Brad Treliving said of Savard’s dismissal earlier in the week. “I look at that particular area, and I don’t want to just single out the power play, but it’s been an area that, to me, has cost us points in the standings. So it’s gotta be better.”