Maple Leafs: Extreme High and Low Expectations

The Toronto Maple Leafs have lost three in a row and, naturally, the piranha’s are circling around the ACC ready to move in and tear apart the entire team.

When the Leafs win, they can do no wrong. When they lose, it’s torch and pitchfork time.

Until the Leafs all-around play picks up we’ll continue to get the extreme highs and lows on the result spectrum. The Leafs will win games and they’ll lose games, sometimes a blowout on either end.

Is anyone surprised that Toronto lost to teams under .500? You shouldn’t be. It’s just what they do. In fact, both Carolina and Philadelphia got the fate they deserved in both contests. Toronto just didn’t play well enough to get the win in either game.

More often than not during the Leafs stretch of great play, prior to Carolina, the losing team was left baffled as to how they didn’t come away with the victory.

Add in a loss tonight against Chicago and it’s time to light the torches again. I don’t make this stuff up, this is the reality of the Toronto Maple Leafs and what the players have to deal with on a daily flip-flop basis.

Is the cliff around the corner? Collectively, the Leafs haven’t played great hockey for the majority of the season but, with such an extended string of luck, expectations had skyrocketed within the city and its fans. Hockeybuzz’s Michael Augello had a perfect tweet following the Chicago loss.

The Leafs have talent; if you don’t agree then you have a predetermined bias against Toronto. The problem Toronto has is that their players aren’t a very cohesive bunch, and they rely a lot on sky-high shooting percentages or a bailout by their goaltenders.

You can use advanced stats, the eye-test or whatever you want and you’ll get the same results. The Leafs get outplayed more than they do the outplaying and, eventually, the results aren’t going to be desirable.

The problem in Toronto, with media and fans, is that this team is either a contender or a pretender depending on if they’ve won or lost a single game. Expectations have to be tempered with this club and they can’t be at either extreme.

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Should the Leafs lose a game there’s no need to reach for the panic button and smash if to pieces. They’ve won many games this year that they shouldn’t have and that’s why they’re in the position they’re in right now.

It’s not panic time, there’s nothing new here. The Leafs have talent, they just need to play better hockey as a team and, *gasp*, that means they have to play better puck possession. I know, the heathen phrase “possession”. How dare I go there.

It’s a simple recipe for success. Better possession teams get better results more often than not. I wrote this on how possession does matter a week ago. It’s a five year sample of facts using Score-Adjusted Fenwick.

Until the Leafs all-around play picks up we’ll continue to get the extreme highs and lows on the result spectrum. The Leafs will win games and they’ll lose games, sometimes a blowout on either end. Temper expectations.

This is a roster that is playoff capable on paper and have probably done enough in the standings so far this year to get them into the postseason –  barring a biblical meltdown – but turning on the team on a dime does no good, just as crowning them contenders after a few wins doesn’t either.

Take a breath and relax. It’s still December.