One of my favourite quirky displays in Toronto sports – potentially all of sports, but definitely Toronto sports, sits on the north end of Coca Cola Coliseum. It’s the Toronto Marlies’ three banners, which provide a sense of perfect balance. Alongside their 2018 Calder Cup banner, sit an Eastern Conference championship banner from the same year, and a Western Conference championship banner from 2012. One of each logo in franchise history, one of each conference. Realignment and rebranding providing that perfect opportunity will never not be funny to me.
By Friday, the team may be looking for a new arrangement. Tonight, the Maple Leafs’ AHL affiliate take on the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Final, looking to shake off a loss from Monday and maintain their head start that they earned on the road, first with a 4-2 win a week ago, followed by an overtime win on Friday.
It’s been a fascinating run for a team that few projected to go the distance, or frankly, all that close to it. Toronto made the playoffs with some room to spare, but much of that wiggle room was as a result of the AHL’s five-round playoff format. Had the format been closer to the NHL’s, they would’ve skipped their best-of-three wildcard round against the Rochester Americans, but as the league’s fifteenth seed with just a +1 goal differential on the season, they would’ve done so much less imposingly.
The underlying numbers didn’t exactly show the 2012 Los Angeles Kings, either, as the Marlies finished the season with a 48% shot attempt share, good for 23rd in the league. What they did have was a set of reinforcements that their first two oppnents wouldn’t have yet – with Buffalo and Montreal still in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Toronto was able to send back down all of their late-season call ups, along with Leafs rookie Easton Cowan, to give themselves their best possible AHL roster on paper.
The results? Well, if we’re being honest with ourselves, they’ve been more on the “good enough” side of things than a run of dominance. In fact, this has probably been the tightest deep run that the organization has had on the Exhibition grounds in nearly 20 years. 2018 had a tense first round and final, but featured a dominant regular season and two sweeps in the middle. Their conference final defeat the following year began with two sweeps. 2016 featured one of the best AHL regular season teams of all time and kicked off with a sweep, while 2012 saw them lose just two playoff games heading into the Final. 2014 saw the Marlies lose the Western Conference final in 7 games, but began with Toronto winning the first eight.
This year has seen the Marlies go the distance in three consecutive series to get to this point. Granted, “the distance” is shorter than the 7-7-7-7 format many are used to, which Toronto needing 3, 5, and 5 in their series so far, but do-or-die has been the refrain many times along this path this season.
This hasn’t just been the case in raw results either. After a strong showing against a much weaker Rochester roster in the Wildcard, it’s been a mixed bag since. Toronto has trailed in even-strength attempts (Corsi) and all-situations expected goals in 9 of 13 games since the start of the division semi-finals, including in many of their wins. The previous series against Cleveland was particularly egregious for this, with Toronto giving up more than they took basically every step of the way.
So how are they still here and what should you make of it?
For starters, if you’re looking for something to take out of this run and bring up to the big club in the years to come, you have to look at Artur Akthyamov. What he’s done in this playoff run for Toronto has been nothing short of incredible, and has led to him going from a 1A/1B situation with Denis Hildeby and grasping the net for himself. Beginning the playoffs with a shutout, Akhtyamov has posted a 9-5-0 record, a 0.924 save percentage, and a 2.18 goals against average, making big saves when needed and staying consistent in less-intensive time.
Having the best goalie in a series is a hell of an equalizer when your team isn’t dominating the flow of play. This could prove troublesome for the Marlies as they face another red-hot goalie in Sergei Murashov (0.936 /1.93) for the rest of this series, and then see themselves facing either Trent Miner (0.936 / 1.51) or brief Leaf Cayden Primeau (0.924 / 2.40) should they advance. But if you’re thinking ahead for the organization at large, Akhtyamov is making the possiblity of moving one of Anthony Stolarz or Joseph Woll in the summer for help amongst the skaters or draft picks to restock the cupboards that much more viable.
On the skater front, there’s a little less to be fired up about. Toronto’s goal-scoring prowess has largely come from veterans Vinni Letteri and Logan Shaw, who are fantastic soldiers and AAAA talents, but are both in their 30s. Players like William Villeneuve, Ryan Teverberg, Luke Haymes and Jacob Quillian have had moments in these playoffs, but haven’t had the dominanating pops you’d hope to see out of mid-development-aged (22-25) players on a deep run. Bo Groulx, who fared well in spot duty for the big club down the stretch and was the Marlies’ top regular season goal scorer, has largely stayed off the scoresheet.
As for the youngest players of the bunch, there hasn’t been much to write home about. Noah Chadwick is trending nicely as a stead two-way defender who could see spot duty in time, but there isn’t much flash to his game. Cowan has been a mixed bag, with his lines often getting outshot more significantly than the others and a lot of forced plays leading to turn overs coming as the result of his decision making. It’s both a bit disappointing in the sense that there was hope for an explosive run for him, but also probably a good thing for him to get a reminder that just because he was “the guy” in junior and he just played a full NHL season, doesn’t mean that a league like this isn’t difficult, especially once you start facing the top teams in meaningful games. An upper-body injury kept him out of Games 2 and 3 of this series, so you hope to see him back at some point down the line here.
Ben Danford joined the run after the conclusion of his OHL playoffs and, to his credit, has been good for a low-production defender coming straight from junior no limited pro experience. While he has just one point in eight games and is only playing about 15 minutes a night, he’s made the most of his assignments and displayed flashes of his defensive IQ throughout. I don’t think he’s all that close to regular NHL minutes, nor do I think his upside is gigantic, but this is good experience for him to have.
Overall, I don’t see this run having an overly transformative effect on the organization at large – some deep AHL runs can come with a wave of graduations, but they’re rarer than most realize – it all counts towards player development, mentally and physically, and all experience is good to have. It’s also been a silver lining for a Leafs fanbase that hasn’t had much to celebrate over the last calendar year, with the Colaseum getting more and more packed with each round. The Marlies lost a lot of their shine in town post-Covid, especially as the prospect pool in Toronto faded and the PWHL’s Sceptres gave another hockey option in the building, but this run could spark some of that interest again.
They’ll need it to keep going, though, and the Penguins won’t go away easy. This series has been the highest-event of the bunch so far, with Wilkes-Barre being just as willing as Toronto to control the puck in the neutral zone, rather than opting for quick rims out of the defensive zone or dump-and-chase efforts to gain the offensive zone. They’re putting more pucks towards the net than any of Toronto’s previous opponents, even if they aren’t always the highest-danger looks. Not only does that compliment their roster of skaters, but it’s an effort to tire out a Marlies team that’s played the longest possible playoffs so far by keeping them on their toes.
Toronto had a solid effort to combat this on Monday, but left the slot open a few too many times – four of the Penguins’ goals came in tight, three of them through quick passes and one an unfortunate dribbler. We’ll see what adjustments they can make tonight to get back in the driver’s seat.
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