Going into the off-season, the Maple Leafs needed to address defence. Toronto’s big addition was Ron Hainsey. Not the sexiest name out there, but he wasn’t too expensive and was coming off a Stanley Cup victory with the Pittsburgh Penguins where he was second in ice-time on the blue line.



He played tough minutes too.



That’s key because the Leafs need someone who can handle tough minutes after running the Morgan Rielly and Nikita Zaitsev pair into the ground last season.



What are tough minutes? Usually, it’s a synonym for tough competition, but there’s people who are skeptical of its importance given the small spread between the toughest and softest competition. Everyone plays everyone. That creates a sticking point in the analytics community because others believe its importance is being understated.



The current ways of measuring it are pretty unreliable, too. It’s hard to measure quality of competition without...