Earlier, I uncovered the shocking truth about the Leafs defensive pairs, and who was really playing as the top two defenders. Kyle Dubas turned that on its head with the acquisition of Jake Muzzin, so now there are three top-four defenders and one big question mark in Nikita Zaitsev.
Judging by the usage I detail in the first post, Muzzin is very likely to lift some of the burden off of Zaitsev in terms of how the five-on-five minutes are doled out. The tricky part there will be not overloading Morgan Rielly, who will be Muzzin’s partner.