The Leafs give up 25 more shot attempts per hour on average with Ben Smith on the ice so I can ' t say ownend responsibility is abundant there . Matt Martin is their lead cornerman on that line , so he ' s not helping a huge amount there . You don ' t play your fourth line to play is archaic thinking . Fourth lines used to be full of grinders because elite hockey players weren ' t common years ago . Recently , teams still have fourth lines full of grinders because nobody has cap space and teams are scared of trusting their kids early . The teams that go far in the playoffs ever year are usually the ones who have fourth lines that are filled with actually pretty decent hockey players trying to score goals , hence these wow this guy is having a coming out party every spring . Combine that with the fact that everybody is doing the desperation stuff when it becomes all or nothing season , and that teams don ' t have time to pick fights for no reason at this point , and suddenly all four lines of every team , particularly the winning ones , have that hard working factor attached to them . The teams that walk into the playoffs and play straight up bad lines to create resilience instead of having their good players work hard are the ones who get torched . Don ' t build a normal fourth line . Build a skilled one with the money you have , create a culture of hard work around them , and skate around the bad depth players .