Toronto Maple Leafs Standings and Team Stats Update

The Toronto Maple Leafs have played 58 of the 82 scheduled games this season.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are now approximately 70% throw their regular season. Due to a glitch in the Matrix, they’ve all but clinched at least a third place divisional playoff spot.

The Leafs are 34-19-5 and have 73 points, five back of the Bruins and six back of the Lightning.  Tampa has played one less game and Boston three, so it will be hard for the Leafs to catch them.  They’ve won four in a row, five of six, eight of ten, nine of eleven……any way you look at it, they’ve been on fire, but not really gaining too much in the standings.

The Leafs – the team everyone tells me isn’t a contender – are ranked sixth overall in the NHL and are six points out of first place overall…….that’s three games, if we pretend it’s the baseball standings.

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They have the fifth best goal differential in the NHL.  They have the Matthews, who is second in the league in 5v5 goals, and they have the guy who should be the odd-on favorite to win the Vezina. (More on that in a sec).  The Leafs are fourth in goals for and 12th in goals against.

Basically, they are awesome.  And they’ve done all this with Ron Hainsey on the top pairing, and Roman Polak playing every night, and a huge slump from Kadri, and ten games without Matthews, and two early season luck-based slumps from Nylander and Marner, and an eight game Rielly injury, and a month without Zaitsev……. which means there’s room for improvement.

Some Problems

While the goals, assists and wins stats all paint a rosy picture for the Leafs, there are some concerns.

The Leafs are 19th in the NHL in Corsi-for percentage.  They are just slightly under 50%.  Great goaltending and a high overall shooting percentage has mostly hid this problem, but it should be of some concern.  A healthy Rielly and Zaitsev will help. The addition of Dermott will help, and let’s not forget Matthews missed ten games.  I don’t know how much of a concern this should be in light of all the other great stats, but ideally you’d like your team solidly in the top half of the league in possession because if you are, you have a better chance of sustaining your success.

The Leafs are the fifth worst shots against team in the NHL.  This wouldn’t be so bad if they were ranked higher than 18th in shots-for per game, but it is a problem.  The Leafs are averaging 33 shots against per game, but the good news is that they only need to shave three shots per game off their total to move into the top ten.  Harder than it seems, no doubt, but not impossible.

Next: The Enemy's Insite: Playoff Push

When you look at the stats, I believe there are way more positives than negatives for the Toronto Maple Leafs at this point.

Stats from naturalstattrick.com  and NHL.com