One Huge Difference for Toronto Maple Leafs in This Year’s Playoffs

The Toronto Maple Leafs will face the Boston Bruins in the Playoffs again this year.

And this year, the Toronto Maple Leafs will be able to brings something different to the table.

You thought I was going to say John Tavares.

Of course they will be bringing him, and he’ll make a huge difference.  But what I want to talk about is Auston Matthews.

The Toronto Maple Leafs will be facing the Bruins with an effective Auston Matthews and William Nylander, and that will make all the difference.

Matthews and Nylander

Auston Matthews and William Nylander did not get good results against the Bruins last year, and considering the Leafs lost by one goal in game seven, a regular amount of output from them would have made all the difference.

Matthews ended the seven game series with one goal, and one assist.  Matthews should, at a minimum, have seven points in seven games, so obviously this was the difference. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).

Nylander had four points, which is better than two, but together the Leafs best duo scored 6 out of a necessary 14 points in the series.  There has been talk that they didn’t show, that they didn’t perform or that they were bad.

This isn’t the case at all.

The Matthews line was hard-matched with the Chara/McAvoy pairing and they were above 50%  possession against them.  They were above 50% against anyone except the Bergeron /Marchand line, which is widely considered the best line in the NHL.

Despite the tough minutes, Matthews and Nylander were 50% or over and had positive or even differentials in 5v5 shot-attempts (possession), shots, and scoring chances.   Their on-ice shooting percentage and on-ice save percentage were unfathomably bad, putting up a PDO of .870 when on the ice together.

This means that while they played well, they just didn’t get the results.

PDO is a measure of luck and is simply shot-percentage and shooting percentage added together.  It is understood that players have zero influence into their shooting or save percentages, and that over time they will combine to equal 100.  A 97 over a full season would show extreme bad luck, so it’s almost impossible to even convey how unlucky an 87 is, which is what Nylander and Matthews had last year in the playoffs.

If that number goes up even slightly, the Leafs win the series running away.

A lot of people say Matthews and Nylander played badly in the playoffs. I’ve had someone say something similar to me almost every day for a year, but it’s just not true – they were just demonstrably unlucky.

It didn’t help that Babock kept splitting them up in a search for better results, because when separated, the numbers of each player took an absolute nose dive.

This is, the Toronto Maple Leafs are almost sure to get more production out of their best player and his wingman.  The key to success is just for Babcock to leave them together.

Boston won’t have the luxury of hard matching their best players against them either, because now that the Toronto Maple Leafs have a Tavares/Marner combo to send out, the Bruins will be left with at least one combo that will totally destroy weaker competition.