As good as he has looked this season, Jake McCabe has zero history of playoff success. On the current Leafs blue line, he isn’t alone.
The sports world has its share of universal truths. In baseball, the old saying goes that you can’t have too much pitching (especially when your analytics department yanks the starter in the fourth inning). In the current iteration of the NBA, you probably can’t have enough three-point shooting, a fact that only recently appears to have dawned on the Raptors.
And in hockey, as Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving was saying this past week, “You can never have too many defencemen.”
That last one might not actually be as universal as it sounds. The Vegas Golden Knights rode to the Stanley Cup last spring relying almost entirely on six defencemen, save for a few spot-duty appearances. The Florida Panthers got to the Cup final largely on the backs of the same six. Florida’s opponent in the Eastern final, the Carolina Hurricanes, used six blueliners in their run. The other Western finalist, the Dallas Stars, used seven.
So if you’ve got the right horses, and you get your share of luck in the injury lottery that is the playoffs, maybe you can have too many defencemen. Maybe six or seven is more than enough.
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