Toronto Maple Leafs: Scary Already but Just Scratching Surface

The Toronto Maple Leafs are 4-1.

Despite some reluctance on the part of the media to acknowledge it, and with apologies to Boston, Tampa and Winnipeg, the Toronto Maple Leafs are the best team in the NHL.

Even with their flaws (the worst LW and RD in the NHL) they are still a ridiculously talented team.

The Leafs can simply score their way out of trouble for now, but they won’t always have to.

And that’s the crazy thing.

Improving Leafs

Given the absolute dominance the Leafs have displayed over the first two weeks of the NHL season, this might sound crazy, but I can back it up: they are only scratching the surface.

Take goaltending, hockey’s most important position.  The Leafs have a top ten, possibly top five goalie.  Right now, he’s not even close to that. The Leafs, due to an 88% (ish) team save percentage at 5v5 are surprisingly not over 100 PDO (meaning what they’ve done is sustainable; at least the results).

Then take Nazem Kadri. Left to fend for himself with so below average wingers, Kadri is playing great but not getting any results. Both things will change and as Tavares and Matthews go on inevitable cold-streaks, Kadri will turn hot. With three #1 centers, (three top 15 centres) the Leafs are going to dominate.

There’s More….

I’m just getting going.  There are even more reasons why the Leafs – clearly the NHL’s most dominant team so far – will be even better.

The salary cap.  The Leafs are currently frozen by the Nylander negotiations, but once that’s taken care of, you can expect them to take advantage of their remaining cap space to improve the team.

How do they do that? We’ll they’ve got several excellent non roster prospects and all their future draft picks.  Teams in the Leafs position routinely trade first rounders and this team will be no exception.

The Leafs also have Andreas Borgman in the AHL and I’m not sure people realize how effective of an NHL player he has been so far.  That’s depth.

Oh and there’s Andreas Johnson.  He’s so far done nothing, but he almost led the AHL in scoring last year.  The Leafs are extremely weak on the left side and it’s just a matter of time before he gets a shot with one of the three big centres and cements himself as a regular.

Finally, I come to the most obvious upgrade.

William Nylander

William Nylander outscored Tavares, Malkin, Crosby and Tarasenko at 5v5 last year.  The only thing that prevented him from being a top ten scorer in the NHL was the fact that (through no fault of his own) he was not on the Leafs top power-play unit.

I don’t think he gets nearly enough credit for how good he is, which is super-star level.  Imagine adding another elite player to what the Leafs already have.

Kapanen is breaking out, so we’ve barely missed him, but once he’s back guess who no longer has to play with duds?  If you said Nazem Kadri, give yourself a prize.

Your team not dominant enough after a 4-1 start in which you lost your best played game and scored about 50 goals?  Just add another elite player.

It’s insane.

To sum up: The Toronto Maple Leafs, already the best team in hockey, have cap space, trading assets, under achieving players and an elite player on the sidelines.

I think it’s time to do what our detractors have been mocking us about for years and plan the parade already.