I regret to inform you that the Third-Pairing Defencemen Wars are back in Toronto.
It’s all rather reminiscent of the Roman Polak vs. Connor Carrick debates of 2016-17, or the rise and fall of Martin Marincin and Justin Holl — or how about the heated Travis Dermott internet skirmishes that raged among Maple Leafs fans and media for five seasons (!) between 2017-18 and 2021-22?
And we won’t even get into Igor Ozhiganov’s unforgettable 53 games in 2018-19.
Yes, we have been here before, many times. And almost always, the outcome has been, well, that these are kind of just guys — depth defencemen that no one should really be getting this worked up over.
Which brings us to Timothy Liljegren.
Liljegren has been a healthy scratch through the first three games with the Leafs so far, losing his job to Conor Timmins, another candidate to be included in our depth defencemen war-of-words battles. This after Liljegren signed a two-year, $6 million deal in the offseason, after the best season of his young career in which he played nearly 20 minutes a game and seemed to establish himself as something more than just a guy.
But there’s a new coach in town, and Liljegren, even by his own admission, did not have a good training camp and preseason. The new coach wasn’t impressed, so he’s been on the outside looking in, waiting for a chance to play on the Leafs’ third pair.
It sounds like he’ll get that on Wednesday against the Los Angeles Kings. But little more is guaranteed.
Liljegren is, like some of the other defencemen I listed above, massively polarizing right now. If you talk to some in the analytics community, he can be a very useful player; someone who drives play and puts up impressive results in key statistics like expected goals share.
But if you talk to the critics, including those who rely more on the eye test, Liljegren is not a top-four defenceman, and not someone you want to dedicate so much of your cap space to given you can’t trust him higher in the lineup.
“He doesn’t do anything special,” one assistant coach familiar with his game texted me over the weekend. “(Timmins) defends a bit better and is maybe a bit harder to play against. Liljegren is a replacement-level NHL D.
“He’s not young. He’s not likely to have an upside.”
Liljegren is 25 years old. He’s played three seasons with the Leafs, including 196 games, 14 goals and 65 points. For quite a bit of that time, he was on the third pair, sheltered from facing top competition.
But with injuries and shifting lineups a factor, Liljegren has also stepped up into more difficult situations at times. In 51 of those 196 games, he logged more than 20 minutes played, which is decidedly top-four usage. The majority of those games came last season.
And the charts loved what he did in those minutes, to the point that he’s not just worth his new contract: He’s potentially a big bargain.
Model loves Liljegren deal — shocker. (Yes, QoC and QoT are accounted for).
Looked like he took a serious step forward towards being an every day top four defenseman last year before suffering a high ankle sprain. We’ll see if he gets back on that track next season. pic.twitter.com/cZpsA067Us
— dom 📈 (@domluszczyszyn) June 30, 2024
But then the playoffs rolled around and he was on the outs, healthy scratched for Game 4 and his minutes down to heavily sheltered, third-pair territory.
The trouble with Liljegren is, in part, consistency. He has significant lapses in judgement, often in his own end and defending around his net, and those big mistakes can prove costly.
They also stick with a coach, and it’s why he wasn’t always trusted in key moments under Sheldon Keefe.
The other thing is Liljegren’s skill set doesn’t allow him to fit any one particular role. He’s not a great player on the power play or the penalty kill, which is often how coaches like to use their depth defencemen. He’s not particularly big or physical. He’s not particularly fast. There’s no booming shot or signature offensive weapon there, either.
He just helps control play at even strength, especially in depth minutes.
The disparity between the stats and how he’s perceived by many coaches and management around the league is stark, though. The Leafs have contemplated trading Liljegren for at least the last five months now, and the return at this point sounds like it would be miniscule.
They’re probably better served by playing him and showcasing what he can do because as a $3 million healthy scratch, he’s going to be difficult to move for much of anything.
And if the Leafs run into injuries, they’ll have a ready-made solution on the right side, which, as we’ve seen for years in Toronto, can be a very difficult position to fill league-wide.
The trouble with letting this play out is, at some point, Toronto will get Jani Hakanpää and the rest of the LTIR gang back, and they’ll be well over the salary cap. They’re going to have to shed a significant salary. And they may not be able to wait until Liljegren’s market value rises to do it.
The downside risk for the Leafs here? Perhaps Liljegren’s analytical profile is correct in that he can be something more, the way other formerly depth defencemen like Vince Dunn went from “not trusted” at age 24 to making a huge impact once they matured a bit and had a change of scenery (in Dunn’s case, going from the St. Louis Blues to the Seattle Kraken a few seasons ago).
Maybe that’s true, and maybe Liljegren joins the impressive list of defencemen who broke out after age 25 to become something more. But it certainly doesn’t seem like it’ll happen here, under a new head coach (and GM) trying to bring in a bruising, physical style that just doesn’t fit his game.
And not with the cap crunch and so many other depth options available to play third-pair minutes while making less.
Like Timmins, who the charts are also a fan of.
And Timmins offers that for roughly one-third the price.
I wrote last week about how hard it can be to evaluate goaltenders statistically, and why that makes it challenging for netminders to get paid the way they want to be. Depth defencemen are really in the same boat these days, and the teams that can identify players like Dunn and Gustav Forsling — who turned out to be something more than their previous usage showed — are going to come out way ahead.
Finding underappreciated blueliners is a valuable skill in a league where anyone who can consistently log 20-plus safe minutes a game is getting $5 million or more into their mid-30s.
Whether you believe Liljegren is going to be one of those players who either makes the jump to top-four regular or gets relegated to the pile of underwhelming depth defencemen who came through Toronto really depends on the weight you put in all the data.
But even his most ardent defenders have to admit at this point that it appears pretty unlikely he’s going to get that chance with the Leafs, what with four veterans locked into the top four above him and almost no room for error in the limited chances he has left under coach Craig Berube.
Barring injuries, all that appears to be left is to see what meagre return the Leafs can get for him in a midseason deal, and if they come to regret selling low on a player they’ve spent the past seven years developing from a No. 17 pick into what he is today.
(Photo of Timothy Liljegren: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
