The Toronto Maple Leafs sit second in the Atlantic, five points back of Tampa Bay.
As the season moves beyond the quarter pole and onto the one-third mark, we hear at Editor in Leaf will be doing a few posts in the coming days that gauge the performance of the Toronto Maple Leafs and their individual players so far.
Today we begin my looking into the Penalty Kill and the Power-Play.
Last Year
In order to see how the Leafs are, and can be expected to perform on special teams, its important to know what they did last year – for comparison’s sake.
Last year the NHL’s best power-play was the Buffalo Sabres at 24.5%. The Toronto Maple Leafs were second in the league with a 23.8% success rate. The Leafs scored 54 goals on the power play (5th, Tampa led with 60). They allowed seven short handed goals (tied for fourth worst).
Gardiner led all players on Toronto with 202 PP minutes, and nine players had 160 + power play minutes (Gardiner, Matthews, Nylander, Kadri, Zaitsev, Bozak, JVR, Marner, Komarov). Brown played 101 minutes, and Rielly 70.
On the PK the Leafs 10th in the NHL with an 82.5% kill rate. Along with Boston, Washington and the Blues the Leafs were one of only four teams that finished top-ten in both PK and PP last season.
The personnel on last years PK was (in order of minutes played): Hyman, Polak, Hunwick, Rielly, Komarov, Brown, Zaitsev. Those seven players killed the vast majority of minutes, ranging from 140 for Zaitsev to 225 for Hyman.
This Year
Tampa is this year’s leader in PP% so far. They are converting at a ridiculous 27%. The Leafs have 16 goals and are converting at 22% which is still very good. The Leafs have the 10th best PP% and the 7th most goals. They are almost 2 percentage points worse than last year, but they were almost 24% last year and that’s very high. Nearly one in four when you should expect to score one in five. Anywhere between those two points is very good and so I think even though it is a little off last years pace, it remains a team strength. (And Matthews missing four games and Nylander and Marner suffering from random shooting percentage depression will make it rise in the future, I’m betting).
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Jake Gardiner remains only seconds behind Marner for most minutes on the PP, so that hasn’t really changed. What has changed is that Rielly is back on the power-play regularly and so are Brown and Marleau. Instead of using nine guys the most, Babock is utilizing two full five-man units and being more consistent with the tenth player. Komarov and Zaitsev have drastically had their PP time cut back. Basically though, it’s 90% the same guys and they’re getting pretty much the same results. This is a team strength.
On the PK the main difference is that Hainsey has played 20 minutes more than anyone else. Rielly’s PK minutes have now gone to Zaitsev. Polak and Hunwick are (mostly) gone, and Hyman, Brown and Komarov remain the most used forwards.
Reilly and Gardiner combine for half of Zaitsev’s total PK minutes, and no other defenseman is every used (unless Polak dresses, which he never should).
With these changes, the PK is slightly worse than last year. Instead of tenth, they are 14th. They are less than 2% points worse however, and I think that difference could be chalked up to randomness rather than personnel. Frankly, in a 31 team league with a salary cap, there just isn’t that much difference between being 10th and 14th. On the PK anything above 80% is good.
Conclusion
The Toronto Maple Leafs special teams are a strength. Last year they were the 4th best special teams team in the NHL and this year they’re on their way to doing something similar. There is reason to believe that their PP will actually get better (Matthews, Nylander, Marner) and the PK is doing fine. In fact, given how bad the goaltending was in October, it’s likely the PK also improves.
If there is a slight regression from last year, and there is, and its very slight, then that isn’t cause for concern. I’d like to see the Leafs get some more even distribution of PK minutes, but other than that, I have no complaints.
The Leafs are currently around the 10th best overall in terms of special teams and there is no reason to think that ranking will go anywhere but up.
Next: Rielly Looks to Take Reins as #1 Dman
All stats from naturalstattrick.com