Toronto Maple Leafs: Y’all Need to Relax
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs will make the playoffs.
As much as I am glad that we’ve moved on from the ridiculous, maddening, nonsense of “I never expected them to be good so I don’t care what happens,” this new anxiety is almost worse.
It’s time to relax my good friends.
The Leafs are a good team. The Leafs will be in the Playoffs. You don’t need to worry about about defense, blowing leads or faceoffs. In fact, let’s just be better than the sub-par broadcasts we’re stuck with and never talk about faceoffs again. (Talk about overkill).
Why It’s All Good
“I hate the shootout.”
“This team can’t compete if they’re so bad in extra time.”
“Defensive Faceoffs are Killing us.”
“They Haven’t won in four games.”
And so on, and so forth. It’s all nonsense.
As your good friend Stephen has just said, the Toronto Maple Leafs are doing fine. If you get a point, it’s a successful day.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are getting points when they’re losing. That’s a positive. You lose in the NHL. It happens. At least the Leafs losses are gut wrenching. This suggests they’re good. If they were getting blown out, that’s a problem.
Here’s a few things to keep in mind:
Faceoffs have no correlation to winning. Whatever response you want to make to this will be ignored because math doesn’t lie. The Colorado Avalanche were the best faceoff team in hockey the last time I checked.
Overtime is 3 on 3. Shoutouts are 1 on 1. The Leafs are built for these kinds of competitions. The fact is, however, at the NHL level, they’re basically random.
Like I said: The Leafs are fine.
Toronto Maple Leafs and the Playoffs
The glass is definitely half-full here. The Toronto Maple Leafs have lost a combined 14 over-time and shootout games. That’s a league high and only five off the all-time record.
Why isn’t this a problem? It’s not a problem because it’s pure bad luck. Auston Matthews has three or four OT breakaways this season that he missed and which led to a goal going back the otherway. The format the NHL has after regulation makes the results almost completely random.
If the Leafs were one point out of the Wildcard and had a record that was what they deserved, then I’d be less optimistic.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are the 11th best 5v5 score-adjusted Corsi Team in hockey.
They have the best special teams in the NHL. (Corsica.hockey)
And they’ve lost up to 14 points after regulation.
Clearly their record should be better. On the other hand, the Canadians actually have a worse record than the Leafs since October. Montreal should be buried and done. Lucky for them, Carey Price has been on a hot streak. They still can’t score. The Senators are riding a lot of luck to be where they are. The Islanders can’t possibly keep their recent hot-streak going.
Of the teams the Leafs are in direct competition with, only Boston is arguably a better team.
The Leafs could have played the exact same games, the exact same way, and currently be leading the division. They’ve been unlucky. But they get points when they lose. For the final 19 games, this bodes extremely well for the Toronto Maple Leafs.