The Toronto Maple Leafs Didn’t Sign Max Domi to Play Centre, or On the 3rd Line

The Toronto Maple Leafs signed Max Domi to a one-year show-me contract last season.

This year, the Toronto Maple Leafs signed Max Domi to a four year extension, after he did in fact “show them.”

Except he didn’t do it in the way that anyone expected.

Max Domi played most of the season as the Leafs third line centre and was a failure.

In minutes that were not with Auston Matthews, the Leafs only possessed the puck 47% of the time when Max Domi was on the ice. Despite managing to win his non-Matthews minutes, Domi played to just a 47% Expected Goals Rating when centering his own line.

Not only should Domi have lost his minutes, but the minute he was playing were extremely sheltered, which had reverberations up and down the lineup. With no “shut down” option on the third-line, Keefe had to overplay his David Kampf led fourth line.

Furthermore Auston Matthews and John Tavares were forced to play while rarely getting favorable matchups, because in order to make Domi and Robertson effective, Keefe could only start them in the offensive zone against weak competition. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).

The Toronto Maple Leafs Didn’t Sign Max Domi to Play Centre, or On the 3rd Line

In order to score just 52% of the goals (which is good, but not great) the Leafs had to deploy their Max Domi centered third line with extremely sheltered minutes.

When Keefe switched Domi from centering the third line to playing on Matthews’ wing, Domi essentially went from a replacement player who needed to be sheltered to be effective, to a franchise-level player.

The Leafs were winning 52% of Domi’s minutes until they paired him with Matthews and then they were winning 62% of his minutes.

With Robertson, Domi was very productive, scoring at 2.9 points per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice-time. That’s roughly first line production. But keep in mind, that he had to be very sheltered to score that much and even though he was being sheltered, he was still barely winning his minutes.

With Matthews, Domi jumped almost a point per hour, scoring 3.77 points per 60, which is franchise-player level scoring and a higher rate than Connor McDavid ever finished a season with (keep in mind, this is a small sample size of only 200 minutes, just over 10 games. Regardless it’s still very good).

Even better are the stats Matthews put up with Domi. When paired with Marner last year, he scored 2.75 P/60. With Nylander 3.11 P/60. But with Max Domi it jumps to an absolutely insane 4.9 Points per 60 minutes of ice time.

Auston Matthews has never posted better numbers. Max Domi hasn’t posted better numbers. With Domi on line one, the Leafs defeat the biggest problem of having him in the lineup, which is that he needs to be extremely sheltered from good players and defensive situations in order to be effective.

With Matthews, Max Domi essentially turns into a franchise player, which allows the Leafs to put their other two actual franchise players on different lines and stretch their lineup. Max Domi on the wing gives the Leafs an incredible lineup.

Domi was not signed to play centre, and I don’t think the Leafs would have kept him if he didn’t explode when they paired him with Matthews.