The Toronto Maple Leafs the Washington Capitals tonight as they return from their longest road trip of the season.
Fresh off an overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues – which I blame on the referee who caused Mitch Marner to give the puck away – the Toronto Maple Leafs return home to face the Washington Capitals without their #3 centre Nazem Kadri.
Although, to be fair, calling him a #3 centre is unfair when he’s one of only eight centres to score over 30 goals in back-to-back years the last two seasons.
The Leafs will use William Nylander at centre in Kadri’s absence. Regardless, we are here to recap the road trip, so let us get to it!
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The Toronto Maple Leafs return from a six game road trip where they finished with a 3-2-1 record. On the surface, it was a moderately successful roadtrip. They finished with a winning record and got seven out of a possible twelve points. It’s not great, but there are certainly worse results to be had whenever a team goes on their season’s longest trip.
It’s important, I think, to remember that results over a short period of time are likely to be a poor representation of a team’s overall play. The Leafs could just as easily won the games against St.Louis and New York by playing no different in either game. (Of course, the pessimist can always point out that they easily could have lost to Montreal).
What is a mediocre record after six games suddenly becomes a world beating 5-1 record that would have had the Leafs one point out of second place overall in the NHL (with a game in hand).
Over the six games on the road, the Leafs played to what was basically 50% puck possession, which is in line with the fact that they won three and lost three and the majority of the six games could have gone either way.
One reason the Leafs didn’t win more on their road trip was their power play, whose problems continue to cost the Leafs points. The crazy thing about the power play is that it’s got some of the best players in the NHL on it, and it gets league-leading amounts of chances and puck possession. I don’t doubt for a minute that it’s current bad state is just one of those random unlucky and unusual things that sometimes happens in sports or life.
The Leafs did score five goals on their power play on the road trip, which isn’t terrible (only a few teams average one PP goal per game) but also doesn’t help make up for the fact that the Leafs have only 33 power play goals on the season, which is almost half of Tampa’s total.
With the road trip behind them and the power play due to go off, and the trade deadline almost upon us, it should be a great end to the season for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
stats from naturalstattrick.com