Has the Maple Leafs' Crowded Blueline Worked So Far?

Timothy Liljegren summed it up best to reporters following Monday's morning skate. 

"Everyone's got to be on their toes and play their best hockey to be in the lineup," the 23-year-old said of his fellow defenders on the Toronto Maple Leafs. 

"I think it's good for our group, coming into the playoffs, to have competition for spots." 

Liljegren wasn't kidding about there being competition, either. 

The hottest topic in Leafs Nation these days exists on the club's blueline – namely, the group is more crowded than it arguably has ever been. 

Not that a team can ever have too many defenders, of course. The playoff grind always leaves the possibility of a season-altering injury lurking around every corner. The Maple Leafs have had that exact scenario befall them more times than they can count over the years, in fact. Now, they have the depth to withstand anything. 

But it's still mighty crowded in that defense corps right now. And with Luke Schenn re-joining the team after a long absence to welcome the birth of his child, it's only going to get tighter. 

Case in point, the Maple Leafs currently have nine NHL-caliber defensemen on their roster – each one capable of holding down a regular role within nearly any top-six around the league. That depth extends even further down Lakeshore Boulevard to the club's AHL affiliate as well, with the Toronto Marlies boasting the likes of Jordie Benn, Mac Hollowell and Filip Kral, each of whom logged various stints at the big-league level this season. 

So, what do you do when you have nine eligible players and only six lineup spots in which to slot them? You create a seventh. 

For the better part of the past two weeks, the Maple Leafs have been operating under an 11-7 formation in order to squeeze an extra body into the lineup instead of relegating him to the press box. The pros and cons of this arrangement have been beaten to death in Toronto's dense media market to this point, but with a solid sample size now under our belts, some meaningful reflection is possible. 

Is it working? 

Well, sort of. 

"We've played some of our best hockey here with 11-7," said Keefe on Monday, hours before the Maple Leafs dropped their matchup that night versus the Buffalo Sabres, followed by their meeting with the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday. 

"We played 12 and 6 in Edmonton (on March 1), and it was probably the worst we felt about our game on that trip. It just happened to be against an opponent that played 11-7 that night. And then we played 11-7 a couple of different times starting in Calgary (on March 2), and I felt that was as good of a game as we played. So, I think the guys, whether it's the forwards or the defense, have responded really well it themselves." 

Keefe was correct in that, toward the end of Toronto's western Canada road trip, this new alignment was doing more good than harm. 

With such a condensed schedule and heavy travel burden, an extra body on the back end eased the pressure on workhorses like Morgan Rielly and T.J. Brodie. They saw their workloads dialled back by an average of two minutes apiece from that Calgary game onward, all in an effort to save their legs. 

It also created a situation where newcomers like Jake McCabe and Erik Gustafsson could get their feet wet alongside pretty much every other Leaf defender on the roster as they acclimated to unfamiliar surroundings – all while playing in a variety of different situations. 

But there is a flip side to that – namely, such constant shuffling on a shift-by-shift basis eliminates the possibility of chemistry. 

The newbies of Gustafsson and McCabe have been among the most well-travelled defenders on the Maple Leafs' blueline since this operational shift. The latter has split the bulk of his time between Brodie and Justin Holl in heavy defensive minutes, while the former has been relegated to basically latching on to whoever needs a running mate at any point in the game. 

Gustafsson's usage, in particular, can often leave him feeling like something of a passenger on some nights, with no defined role on this team outside of running point on the second power-play unit. This isn't a useless hockey player, either. 

Gustafsson has a 60-point season under his belt as a defenseman. He scored a hat trick against the Maple Leafs this very season. And while he's certainly not responsible enough in his own end to contribute as a shutdown guy or penalty killer, the Swede's 38 points in 61 games as Washington's top power-play quarterback logging upwards of 20 minutes per night seems wasted now that he's a bottom-pair hanger-on who barely logs 14. 

Why trade a 22-year-old homegrown prospect for Gustafsson when the prospect basically served the exact same purpose? It's hard to imagine there wasn't more at play here from the front office than simply stockpiling veteran depth. But with the 11-7 arrangement, Gustafsson is either treading water or watching from above. 

At least with McCabe, his role is far more clear. 

"I've played 11-7 plenty of times," explained McCabe on Wednesday. 

"It's just one of those things where you've got to get a rhythm. Different coaches coach it in different ways. But I get to play with a couple of different people throughout the game, so just communication is a little bit more important when you're out there." 

And with the extra bodies comes extra pressure. 

Despite Keefe's hints that the 11-7 formation may stick into the playoffs, the return of Ryan O'Reilly will likely nudge the team back into its typical 12-6 alignment, eliminating an extra lineup spot for a group that already has more than they can fit.

These final 15 games will operate as a tryout stint for Toronto's blueliners not named Rielly, Brodie, Giordano and McCabe. One tough stretch and your spot in the playoff lineup could fall to someone else. 

"I think as a group, we've been able to talk about kind of what's going on and what's coming our way," said Rielly on Wednesday of the added pressure within the D-corps. 

"All you can do is work hard, manage it, talk to one another and communicate, and I think we're doing a good job of that." 

"There's always a lot of competition in the league," added Holl, seemingly one of the defenders fighting to keep his spot amid the added competition. 

"The reality of the situation is that if you're not getting the job done, you just won't be around for long. So, regardless of who you have waiting in the wings, there's always a lot of pressure to perform. I think, for me, it doesn't really change the process." 

No one, not even the coaching staff, seems to know what the Maple Leafs' defense pairings will look like when they take the ice for Game 1 of the playoffs in a few weeks' time. But with a first-round date with Tampa Bay all but set in stone, the battle on the blueline at least keeps things interesting as the final stretch drags on.