The Toronto Maple Leafs are the best team in the NHL.
I don’t care if everyone who goes on the radio says it’s Tampa Bay and not the Toronto Maple Leafs. And I don’t care what the standings say. Most people who speak publically want their opinion to be the right one, so they have to say that.
But the Leafs have kept pace with Tampa – they’ve played most of their games without William Nylander, none of their games with a full-capacity Nylander, and about half of their games without Matthews.
Despite that, the Leafs just badly outplayed Tampa and lust a fluke game. If the Leafs got the score they deserved, they’d only be four points back with a game in hand.
Leafs vs Tampa
So, had the Leafs got the result they deserved the other night, and assuming they win their game in hand, the Leafs would be only two points back.
That’s two points back of a team that is 9-1 in their last ten and cannot play better. They have to lose sometimes. They aren’t going to go 70-12 over a full season.
So while the Bolts are playing out of their mind, getting all the breaks and winning at an unsustainably high rate, the team who hasn’t really dressed their best lineup yet (and won’t until Nylander is back at full speed) is keeping pace.
Seems to me that if you can keep pace with the so-called best team while two of your best players aren’t player and/or aren’t up to par, then you’re doing all right.
If we look at statistics, the Lightning get more shots and allow less shots than the Leafs, while the Leafs have kept pace with better goaltending than the Lightning.
I expect with Vasilevskiy back, that Tampa will get better goaltending going forward, while the Leafs shot differentials should improve with Matthews and Nylander getting back to their full potentials.
If we compare rosters, both teams are deep, but the Leafs are so much better on paper it’s almost cute that people keep saying the Lightning are the best team in the NHL. Their third can’t match a Nazem Kadri. Their top two players (Kucherov and Stamkos) compare favorably to Tavares and Matthews, but I don’t think Point/Gourde/Johnsson stands up at all to Marner/Matthews/Kapanen.
No one on Tampa’s fourth line would make the Leafs, and the fact that they dress Ryan Callahan is hilarious. On defense, if I didn’t know better I’d say their placement of Dan Giradri on their top pairing was just them making fun of the Leafs for their use of Ron Hainsey. The stupidity of these lineup decisions cancel each other out.
Hedman is probably slightly better than Rielly, but they’re both top five defenseman. Gardiner is better than McDonough, and Dermott is probably better than Sergachev. Colbourn and Zaitsev both are terrible, and I couldn’t tell you anything about Erik Cernak as he’s pretty new, but he’s probably comparable to Ozhiganov from what I can tell. Overall I think Tampa has the edge on D, but not by as much as the Leafs have a forward edge.
The eight point standings difference that should really be two, is likely to remain extremely close as the year goes on. The Leafs are likely to spin off a hot streak while Tampa will have to eventually cool down. At the end of the year, these two teams are going to be fighting for the Atlantic division crown and the chance to not play Boston in the first round.
But the Toronto Maple Leafs are the superior team, and this will be reflected when they win this year’s Stanley Cup.
stats from naturalstattrick.com