Why Sam Lafferty’s stock with the Maple Leafs may be on the rise

Tennis was usually on the afternoon docket.

Sam Lafferty would already be in the gym working out at seven in the morning. By 11, he was on the ice, training with two fellow Maple Leafs, Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies. Later that afternoon, after family time with his wife and infant son, Lafferty would usually rejoin Matthews and Knies for spirited games of tennis.

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Lafferty has long spent his offseasons in Arizona. This time, though, he spent it frequently around the Leafs’ best player (and, according to Lafferty, the top tennis player of the Arizona offseason trio).

“We were out on the ice quite a bit,” Lafferty said of Matthews. “That was actually really cool, becoming closer with him. He really helped me, just inviting me to all the skates and learning from him on the ice.

“It goes a long way.”

Indeed, what Lafferty learned from Matthews may just go a long way for the Leafs.

The team is quietly hoping the 28-year-old can play a bigger, more consequential role this season. It wasn’t an accident that Lafferty started camp this fall on a 2A (2B?) sort of line with Knies and John Tavares.

“That just shows what we think of him,” Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said, “that he has more to bring.”

Lafferty had only a bit part with the Leafs last season after a February trade from the Chicago Blackhawks, playing only fourth-line minutes in the playoffs.

What is it exactly that’s inspiring the Leafs’ belief in him? And what did Lafferty take away from all that offseason work with Matthews?

Speed, speed, speed.

Want to know why the Leafs have high hopes for Lafferty this season? It starts with wheels that move faster than anyone on the team, with apologies to Calle Järnkrok. The Leafs want to tap into more of that speed this season. They think (hope!) it will lead to more for Lafferty — more goals, more hits, more impact on the game.

First, the offence. No, Lafferty hasn’t scored much in his limited NHL career — 23 goals in 210 regular-season games — but he did manage 12 in 70 games last season and scored the first goal for the Leafs in Game 3 of the second round against the Florida Panthers.

The Leafs are urging Lafferty to play a more “direct” game, as Keefe described it, one that sees him going straight to the net without passing Go “and creating more chaos around the net and challenging defencemen that way.”

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That, Keefe said, will help Lafferty put bigger numbers on the board.

Lafferty has breakaway speed a la Miami Dolphins wideout Tyreek Hill. He’s there and he’s gone in no time. During a scrimmage over the weekend, he blew past a defender, grabbed a feed from Tavares and was almost instantly at the net with a shot on goal.

“It definitely pushes you back on your heels a little bit when someone’s coming blazing through the neutral zone with that type of speed,” said Jake McCabe, who spent more time on the ice with Lafferty the last two seasons than anyone, the two coming over together in the trade from Chicago.

Pair those more direct-to-the-net wheels with playmakers in the top nine (as opposed to his most frequent Leaf linemate last season, David Kämpf) and maybe Lafferty can push for 15 goals this season, or maybe even a little more than that if his penalty-killing responsibility expands in a big way for the Leafs as seems likely.

Lafferty’s four short-handed goals were tied for third in the NHL last season. He scored all of them over his first 51 games with Chicago, where he played a major role on the PK. After his move to the much, much deeper Leafs, that role shrunk to almost nothing (just 17 minutes and change over 19 games).

That will change this season, what with the offseason departures of prominent killers like Noel Acciari, Ryan O’Reilly and Alex Kerfoot. Lafferty looks to be fourth in line among Leaf forwards for short-handed opportunity, behind only Kämpf, Mitch Marner and Järnkrok.

He already nabbed a short-handed goal in the preseason and may end up leading the league in the non-Connor McDavid department. He boasted strong underlying numbers on the PK last year.

Crafty from Laffy 👀

— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) September 28, 2023

The other thing: Lafferty learned some stuff about shooting from Matthews. It’s pretty well impossible for anyone to shoot like Matthews, a one-of-a-kind shooter, but there are some steal-worthy tricks to his process for a mere mortal like Lafferty.

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Such as how Matthews hurries the puck in a “threatening position” as soon as he gets it.

“That was something I noticed,” Lafferty said. “A big part of that is, as soon as you get the puck, having it in a position to shoot it.”

Lafferty scored those 12 goals last season on only 102 shots. With the Leafs, he barely shot it all — just 4.8 shots per 60 minutes at five-on-five, a number that ranked below Kämpf and Joey Anderson and barely above Wayne Simmonds.

He’s intent on boosting those numbers by getting himself ready to shoot more often.

Finding soft spots of the ice, holes where the defence is not, is one part of that process. So is that whole direct-to-the-net approach. The other more technical adjustment is ensuring he has his stick ready to shoot “off first touch.”

“And using my strengths to create those opportunities,” Lafferty said, no doubt referring to that speed. “Whether it’s getting a puck off the wall and getting it to the middle as quickly as I can. Just the little things like that.”

As McCabe noted, Lafferty’s speed makes him a problem for defenders going back to retrieve pucks. All the more so if Lafferty can assert himself even more physically than he has to this point, as Keefe seemed to suggest.

Lafferty is a chiselled 6-foot-2 and 205 pounds, and competitive too. He should be a menace on the forecheck, and if he is he’ll end up creating more O-zone cooking time for linemates like Tavares. Lafferty ranked 89th among NHL forwards (min. 500 minutes) in hits per 60 last season with 125 in just over 1,000 minutes.

Lafferty will be 29 next spring, but he’s still youngish in his NHL career. He was drafted in the fourth round of the 2014 draft by the Pittsburgh Penguins but spent four full seasons at Brown University after that. He didn’t make his NHL debut for the Penguins until he was almost 25 in 2019. He played mostly spare minutes at the bottom of their lineup.

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It was only a trade to rebuilding Chicago that led to more opportunity.

“He ran with the minutes he was given in Chicago and took full advantage of it,” McCabe said of Lafferty, who averaged around 15 minutes per night. “I don’t think it started out that way. It was more so earned. He took advantage of every chance he got in Chicago. He took his game to another level I feel.”

Versatility is a big part of his toolbox.

Lafferty played a bunch of centre for Chicago and was briefly there for the Leafs after the trade. He figures to be an emergency option in the middle this year in much the same way that Kerfoot was in recent seasons (only with a lot more size and speed). Lafferty might well move around just like Kerfoot did for Keefe. He may start the season with Tavares, but it’s conceivable he plays on every line at some point, maybe even with Matthews. He’s got the pace and defensive chops to play against anyone.

Pulling down just over $1 million on the cap, he brings bargain potential — if he can turn his opportunity into more, well, everything.

“I think there’s a lot there to work with,” Keefe said. “He’s a guy that we think he has more to bring and (can) be an important guy for us.”

Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference and Evolving Hockey

(Top photo of Sam Lafferty: Bob DeChiara / USA Today)