Timothy Liljegren is growing with the Maple Leafs’ defence

No one is going to put Timothy Liljegren into the Norris Trophy conversation. But then, Liljegren isn’t the kind of player that draws attention. He’s humble when he speaks. There’s no real flash to his game. No big, memorable hits.

On a Maple Leafs team with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner setting personal and franchise records, it’s fairly easy for Liljegren and the team’s rebuilt defence to fly under the radar. But Liljegren is coming into his own, aided by a remade Leafs blue line that features a former Norris winner in Mark Giordano and a big hitter in Ilya Lyubushkin.

“I think I’m playing pretty well as of late,” said Liljegren, who scored his fourth goal of the season Tuesday. “Just try to take it one game at a time. Try to make plays with the puck and be good defensively.”

Even his quotes are low-key.

And yet there he is, second among NHL defencemen (per naturalstattrick.com) in one of the most important metrics to the Leafs: expected goals-for percentage.

The Leafs have been expected to score 41.7 even-strength goals with Liljegren on the ice versus 26.15 against, giving him a 61.46 expected goals-for percentage. Only Charlie McAvoy of the Boston Bruins (62.09 per cent) is better among defencemen who have played at least 500 minutes this season.

It is not a be-all and end-all analytic by any means. But Liljegren is also 11th among defencemen in Corsi, one of the older, more common analytics that compares the even-strength shots and shot attempts for the Leafs when he is on the ice versus those against.

“When he’s confident and he’s moving to the puck and skating, he’s extremely good,” Morgan Rielly said. “It’s not hard to see the potential and the upside that he has. He’s a guy who works really hard. He’s really trying to improve and you can tell he’s trying to carve out a role for himself, and he’s doing a great job. I think he’s having a good year.”

Part of the reason Liljegren’s metrics are so good is that he plays protected minutes. As a bottom-pair defenceman — many of his minutes have come with Rasmus Sandin, whose numbers are almost as good — Liljegren doesn’t usually play against opponents’ top lines.

Part of it is opportunity. With Travis Dermott traded, Sandin hurt and Muzzin in and out of the lineup due to concussion issues, Liljegren has been the biggest beneficiary of the Leafs’ remade blue line. He fit in well with Giordano when the veteran was acquired at the trade deadline.

Giordano was so enamoured of playing with Liljegren that he might have instilled some confidence into the former first-round pick. Liljegren appears to have fed off the vibe of playing with veterans rather than other young players, like Sandin and Dermott, trying to find their footing in the NHL.

“He’s got great poise and he makes great reads,” Giordano said. “He’s always in a good spot. He’s got great positioning. It’s been nice to watch him play.”

For the first time since he took over as Leafs coach, Sheldon Keefe has an interesting problem on his hands: Which of the team’s defencemen should be scratched. Until the arrival of Lyubushkin and Giordano, the question was typically the other way around: Which blueliners should play? It’s a subtle but important difference in outlook and it speaks to the depth of the blue line, which had been the team’s Achilles heel.

“No matter who is in of our seven, we think we have three pairs that we wouldn’t hesitate to put in any real situation,” Keefe said.

Keefe keeps mixing up his pairs as the post-season approaches, getting them ready to play with anybody. Rielly has played in recent games with Liljegren and Lyubushkin after most of the season with T.J. Brodie. Brodie has been getting a steady of diet of Muzzin and Justin Holl lately. Giordano, who started with Liljegren, plays with Holl sometimes, and then there’s that Flames reunion with Brodie.

“There are things that we want to look at,” Keefe said. “We don’t have a lot of time remaining. These games are going to go quickly and we have to focus on our team and our game. We try to be mindful of what the schedule of the opponents are going to bring and how that might factor in. But it’s more so that we have to try some things and make sure that, by the time (the regular season ends), we know what we want to go with, or know that we might have some flexibility to try different things as we get into the playoffs.”

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