The Toronto Maple Leafs Are More Ready for the Playoffs Than You Think

The Toronto Maple Leafs were terrible last night.

After clinching a playoff birth the night before in Long Island, it’s hard to blame the Toronto Maple Leafs for a bad game.  They already clinched, had to travel, and they played the night before.

Not to mention they played their back-up goalie.  Sparks hasn’t been great by any stretch, but I think he deserves a bit of a break considering he plays exclusively in back-to-backs when the team is not at their best.

My take on the who situation is this: whether it was MacElhinney or Sparks, if Andersen goes down, the season is essentially over anyways, so who cares?

Playoff Readiness

So the Toronto Maple Leafs are 3-5 in their last eight, and it might seem like they are not ready for the playoffs.  I think, however, that if you look a bit deeper, the Leafs are in fact ready for the Playoffs.

Going back eight games takes us to the 3-0 loss to the Predators on March 19th.  Prior to that, the Leafs had lost to Tampa, Chicago and Ottawa in the infamous week of allowing six goals per game.

Since that putrid four game stretch, however, the Leafs have really turned it around.

In the eight games since, they might have a bad record, but they are otherwise playing great.

Starting with the Nashville game where they lose 3-0 to an amazing goalie, the Leafs played seven straight games where they were the better team.

Once Kadri came back and got his feet under him, the Leafs have been virtually unstoppable at 5v5.  I’m willing to let circumstance write off last night’s game, but the previous seven were games in which the Leafs will almost always win.  (stats from naturalstattrick.com).

The Tavares-Matthews-Kadri lineup down the middle is unstoppable.  As long as the Leafs score on a reasonable percentage of their shots and don’t get let down by their own goalie, there isn’t a team that can match up against them.

On defense, they are getting healthy, and while the Leafs defense is always a source of consternation, they actually have one of the best top-four groups in the NHL – Morgan Rielly, Jake Muzzin, Jake Gardiner and Travis Dermott.

With a healthy defense, tremendous depth down the middle, and solid streak of seven games of excellent hockey, the Toronto Maple Leafs are turning it on at exactly the right time.

Sure, the record isn’t what you want it to be, but the entire team is built around the idea of Trust the Process, so I don’t see why fans shouldn’t be able to do the same thing.

Last night’s game aside, if the Leafs  keep playing like they have for the last two and half weeks, they’ll be fine.