2020 NHL Season: Grading the Toronto Maple Leafs’ left wingers at season pause

With the 2020 NHL season caught in the midst of an unprecedented pause, we take the opportunity to grade the Toronto Maple Leafs’ campaign thus far. Today’s topic: Evaluating the team’s left wingers.

Welcome to the second installment of a seven-part series on the Toronto Maple Leafs’ 2019-20 season. Caught in the midst of the hockey world’s unprecedented pause, now is the time to reflect on what may very well go down as one of the more dynamic-altering campaigns — for better or for worse — in club history.

Largely hyped as a potential season for the books, Toronto’s current run has been defined by a quality of inconstancy. The team has established itself as the NHL’s foremost Jekyll and Hyde organization, with the line between pretender and contender for Lord Stanley’s trophy growing increasingly thin throughout the progression of games.

As such, questions continue to be raised about the state of the franchise. Are the Maple Leafs actually in a serious position to compete for glory? Will the present campaign ultimately become yet another disappointment? And who bears responsibility for the club’s shortcomings?

Over the course of this series, we shall unpack some of the aforementioned questions by grading many facets of the organization. For the purpose of conducting a thorough review, we will only report on players who have skated in more than 10 games in a Maple Leafs uniform across the 2019-20 season. Consequently, the likes of Pontus Aberg, Adam Brooks, Kevin Gravel, Kasimir Kaskisuo, Egor Korshkov, Denis Malgin, Mason Marchment and Calle Rosen shall be excluded from consideration.

With that, let’s move on to today’s topic: Evaluating the team’s left wingers.

Kyle Clifford

Games Played: 16
Goals: 1
Assists: 2
Points: 3
(Note: The statistics above only account for Clifford’s time in Toronto.)

The 2019-20 campaign not only illustrated how badly the Maple Leafs’ administrative body needed to strengthen the club’s sense of physicality, but it also showed just how receptive Toronto’s fans can be to a head-turning enforcer.

In trading for Kyle Clifford — a two-time Stanley Cup winner and former member of the Los Angeles Kings — GM Kyle Dubas swapped a surplus for a shortage, and in turn placed the Maple Leafs in a better position to succeed for the remainder of the season.

Clifford made his on-ice presence felt from the get-go. While not necessarily much of a point-getter, the 29-year-old left winger did not hesitate to throw hits, drop the gloves, dig for pucks and get dirty in front of the nets of his opponents on a relatively consistent basis.

The ultimate crowd energizer, Clifford was widely praised for both his veteran leadership and his ability to add elements to Toronto’s game that the team had been previously lacking. As a result, talk of an extension between both club and player has loomed large over the course of the NHL’s current pause.

Todd Reynolds — Clifford’s agent — recently told the Toronto Sun that his client would be receptive to the idea of signing a contract to remain a member of the blue and white. “Kyle has really liked it and enjoyed it so far,” he remarked, adding, “It’s something we would be interested in and it’s something that the Leafs are interested in.”

Whether a move of this nature shall be possible remains unclear. The Maple Leafs will have to grapple with a changed reality in the not so distant future, in that a revenue drop promises to impose strict financial limitations upon not just the franchise, but also the NHL more broadly.

Either way, expect a reasonable portion of the club’s fans to call for a Clifford extension. He’s precisely the type of player that the city of Toronto has long missed.

Grade: B+