TAMPA – Yes, I called this a must-win game, even though it’s only No. 69 on the schedule.

The Maple Leafs can’t come out of Florida without a point after going winless through California earlier this month. Not with Chicago and Boston their next two opponents. Not with an insane run of 13 games in 23 days staring them down starting on Saturday. Not with Tampa and the Islanders already a point ahead of them and gaining more seemingly every game.

The Leafs badly need a win, for their position in the standings and their confidence. This is as much of a must-win as they’ve had this year. That part just wouldn’t fit into the headline.

The Leafs have struggled a lot of late. That’s been well-documented. But what’s usual about that is there have been very few changes to the lineup, right down to coach Mike Babcock’s line combinations.

In fact, he has basically used the same top three lines all season, for more than five months, save for flipping around right wingers Connor Brown and William Nylander once in a while. No team in the NHL has had as set combinations this year – and perhaps in any recent year.

Five of the 46 most common 5-on-5 line combinations in the league have been Toronto’s:

Thanks to Corsica.Hockey for this data. It shows the time on ice and possession for the Leafs five most frequently used lines, as well as their rank in ice time leaguewide.

Even Babcock has remarked, since way back in November (!), that he doesn’t typically keep guys together as much as he has.

But keeping the lines together made sense up until late January. The Leafs were hot, in a playoff spot, and everyone was playing well. But in the last 22 games, they’ve won only eight times. The Bruins, Islanders and Lightning have all gained seven points on them in those six weeks.

Toronto’s goal production has dropped 10 per cent, from 3.1 per game to 2.8 per game, over these games. (Their problems are more defensive than offensive, but the first four months of the season they were able to outscore some of those issues more often.)

Some Leafs have really struggled to produce in this span. Hyman has four points in the 22 games. Soshnikov has three in 17 games. Brown has seven and Komarov nine. Now that malaise appears to have infected Auston Matthews, who doesn’t have a point in six games.

Then you’ve got Josh Leivo, a healthy scratch, despite scoring nine points in 10 games.

So a lot of fans and pundits have understandably called for changes. Specifically for a deviation from such set line combinations after so many losses. They want to see something different because, well, that’s normally how the NHL works.

Line combinations are made to be broken.

The weird thing with the Leafs is they haven’t done that all year. They’ve looked for balance instead of loading up a line or two, even when they’re not getting that balance. I can see what Babcock is thinking, too: They have only 14 games left – 14 mostly difficult, pivotal games – and it feels like an odd time to start monkeying with the roster.

JVR, for his part, believes there’s more benefit to keeping things the same.

***

Have you ever played on a team where they’ve kept all of the lines this similar for this long?

JVR: “No, no, I don’t think so. I was actually thinking about that a little bit earlier this year. But it’s nice to have that continuity. You get more familiar and you’re able to make some of those split-second plays that can make you more effective as a player. I mean if you know where a guy’s going to be you have that familiarity and trust with them to be able to try some different things that maybe if you’re unsure of makes it not as good of a play.”

A lot of folks are saying that the lines should be shaken up after losing a game like the one in Florida, but with 14 games left, does changing them outweigh the benefit you get by keeping them the same?

JVR: “Exactly. I think it’s easy to say that. Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do: Keep it the same. Because you want to do whatever you can to put you in the best chance to win games. Sometimes a knee-jerk reaction would be ‘okay let’s start switching everything around, we lost a brutal game.’ But again I think we’ve had some good success and we’ve shown balance with all the different lines contributing scoring and I’d like to think it was just one of those games that’s going to happen over the course of the year and we’re going to have a good bounce back game [against Tampa].”

Do the coaches talk about keeping the lines the same?

JVR: “You kind of just show up and that’s what [they are]. I think a big part of that though is we’ve remained relatively healthy all year. There hasn’t really been a necessity to start tweaking things because we’ve had guys out. I’d be interested to know how many man-games we’ve lost [to forwards] from the start of training camp until now. I’m sure it’s pretty low. So that obviously, when different lines are having success at different times, it makes it tough to want to change.”

***

So there’s one vote for keeping things the same.

And based on the lines in practice yesterday, that’s what is going to happen. Babcock is going to go with what brought the Leafs this far, even with their stumbles of late. Now I can come up with some other combinations that make sense, by making the lineup more top heavy, like this:

But the big “what if” here is what if it’s too late to be looking for new chemistry and messing with the already fragile psyche of the roster?

Babcock seems to think so. He seems to think he has a better chance by running out the same trios, again and again.

If they don’t get different results against the Lightning, though, things are going to get dire. Toronto likely needs to go 8-5-1 or 9-5-0 to close the year to make the playoffs. With their next two games against Chicago and Boston, what they can’t afford is to not get points for a sustained stretch.

Three losses in a row and their season is basically over. That’s why this is such a big game.