The Toronto Maple Leafs are poised for more than just a record in wins over one NHL season.
They are also preparing to go into the playoffs with all four lines on the scoring side of the hockey equation. That is of much more significance in the big picture.
Despite the NHL's push for faster, high-scoring games, the lineup formula for success in the playoffs generally remains two scoring lines, one shutdown line and a fourth line that still provides some hitting, as in the regular season, but mostly checks as well. And everybody works a lot harder on their defensive game.
That is part of the reason why the hockey often gets worse as the playoffs progress. Not only do the stars get shut down as often as not, making those infrequent goals pounded out by the third and fourth lines far more important, but the intense checking can turn late-round games into a slog, with the winners being those with the most perseverance, or simply the fewest injuries.
But the Leafs, who can set a franchise record for wins in a season against the Buffalo Sabres on Monday night, are headed toward the playoffs with scoring potential on all four lines. The top four in points on the team – Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and James van Riemsdyk – are spread among three lines, with the recent additions of Tomas Plekanec and Andreas Johnsson making the fourth line capable of playing against any line on the opposition.
Even when Leo Komarov, out with a leg injury, displaces Johnsson in the lineup as soon as Wednesday's game against the Florida Panthers, the Leafs will still have scoring threats on all four lines. And Johnsson will be the first one called if anyone gets hurt.
"I think you look around the league and the top teams all have a lot of depth," said Leafs centre Tyler Bozak, the centre on the third line with van Riemsdyk and Connor Brown. "Look at Pittsburgh the last couple years. They've got a lot of talent and guys that can score, they won [the Stanley Cup] the last two years. It helps us a lot on the road having the ability to throw whatever line out there and know they can play with whomever."
Having four lines that can score gives a head coach maximum flexibility. The opposition can put its shutdown line on his first line all night but if you can send out three other lines that can score it means nothing but headaches for the opponent. At the same time, if your top line grows cold, then there are three other lines able to take up the slack.
That is exactly what happened Saturday night when the Leafs came back against the Detroit Red Wings for their 45th win of the season. The win matched them with Leafs teams coached by Pat Quinn, who hit the 45-mark three times. The win over Detroit also set a franchise record as it was the Leafs' 13th consecutive win at home.
Nazem Kadri and linemates Marner and Patrick Marleau may be simultaneously Toronto's shutdown line and its top offensive unit right now but until Kadri scored the winning goal in the third period the line was not having a great night. So Babcock leaned on his fourth line of Plekanec and speedsters Kasperi Kapanen and Johnsson.
"It wasn't their night, let's clear that up," Babcock said of Kadri's line after the game. As for the fourth line, the coach said, "I thought the three of them, I thought they were really fast. I played them against anybody, I didn't really match as much as I normally do, I just let them roll out the door there. I thought those guys were really effective."
After Sunday's practice, Babcock said the plan always was to build something different than the conventional NHL team of years past: "To say do I have one line that's going to play against the other team's best, and normally we use [Kadri] for that, but do I have three guys that never score another goal and play against the other team's [best line]? We don't want to have that here. We want to have everybody score goals. That's our focus but that doesn't mean we can't be good defensively."
Of course, this approach in the playoffs means the referees have to play ball. The conventional approach for years in the NHL was tackling and other forms of obstruction were often winked at in the playoffs, although in its latest vow to maintain the free-flowing standard of the regular season those overseeing the referees insist the standards have remained the same in the playoffs for the past couple of years. That is the subject of some debate, although van Riemsdyk is willing to concede the point.
"Yeah, I think so," he said, "although to some degree maybe they let a little bit more go in the playoffs. You'd like to think they call it the same. That's why we have the rules in place, to play a game we want to play and people want to watch."