Toronto Maple Leafs New Coaching Hire Already Making a Huge Impact with the Team

Just a few weeks ago, the Toronto Maple Leafs lost assistant coach Lane Lambert to the Seattle Kraken, who hired him as their head coach.

This created a huge coaching vacancy with the Maple Leafs, and over the past few weeks, they have been trying to fill it with the best candidate possible.

Earlier this week, it was announced that the Leafs would be hiring Derek Lalonde as their next assistant coach, which was significant for a few reasons.

Lalonde was most recently the head coach of the Detroit Red Wings, but was let go at the beginning of this season due to an atrocious slow start.

However, Lalonde's best days were as an assistant with the Tampa Bay Lightning, where he won two Stanley Cups and was able to make it to three-straight Finals.

In fact, during his four seasons as the assistant coach in Tampa, the team had the third-best penalty kill in the entire NHL. In fact, during the 2018-19 season, the Lightning were in first place.

This is something the Maple Leafs are going to need next season, as the Leafs were 17th on the PK with a stoppage rate of 77.87 percent, which isn't amazing.

Much like Marc Savard had to revamp the power play, Derek Lalonde is going to have to revamp this penalty kill and make it something worthwhile.

Overall, that is not going to be an easy thing to do. Penalty Kills can be difficult to refine, especially when you put the team's roster into consideration.

However, we have the utmost confidence that Lalonde will be able to get this team where he needs to be.