One of the things that has been pretty obvious through all of the collapses and roller coaster ride the Leafs have had the last 8 years or so has been their lack of adherence to an organized and structured system. Something that has stuck with me since hearing it was the idea that smarter players are usually the better players and are easier to coach. One could draw a correlation to how the Leafs are always struggling to find players that fit in their cap situation and that lower end talent being a larger portion of roster construction and therefore a reason for the overall difficulty in establishing solid systems that perform. This would also explain why the special teams have struggled so much and why certain “talented” players are not being used each of the power play and penalty kill units. It would also explain the aggressiveness of Treliving to acquire Tanev, Carlo, and to a lesser degree McCabe and OEL. These players are high hockey IQ and that shows in how well regarded they are on the fundamentals. It is also seen in how they break up plays and cycles and move the puck out of the zone quickly. It also shows why they have the same players (Rielly I am looking at you) making the same mistakes over and over and over and…well you get the point. On the offensive side I see two things in regard to this. They keep trying to imitate plays that we see teams like Colorado and Winnipeg using to great effectiveness but failing at. They both use a modified 1-3-1 system with a “downhill one-timer” or “back door H5” strategy (you can read a great article here about power play techniques: https://www.purehockey.com/c/power-play-strategies-in-hockey) to get a slipstream one time shot from the slot or a left handed left winger cross crease quick shot under the goalie pad. These are higher IQ plays where you need quality players who can execute and know their roles explicitly. Knowing that a bumper is going to pass to the defence and then that defence in turn will make the pass the high slot for a quick one time shot means the shooter needs to be able to mask the play with positioning and then move quickly to a shooting location and be prepared to take the pass in shoot in one motion, even if the pass isn’t on point. Whereas with an H5 strategy the LW needs to mask his intentions and stay higher or deeper to the boards and then race to position to take a cross crease pass and shoot back against the grain under the goalies right pad. This strategy is effective because the high speed cross crease pass forces the goalie to “sell out” on his move across the net and at high speed when the right skate digs in to stop in position to make the save, the right back will be off the ice and the tenders stick is trailing and out of position from the aggressive manoeuvre. This leaves a five hole scoring opportunity for a split second. This works for two reasons 1) if the goalie is late you have the open net, 2) if the goalie is on time from the aggressive move you can go for the five hole shot. But, these strategies take a higher IQ and although strong systems are what Berube is known for he can’t make a player smarter in the moment and understand a complicated system. To me it seems apparent at this time that the Leafs may not have enough of that…