The Toronto Maple Leafs have lost two straight first-round series to the Boston Bruins.
Everyone likes to lament the fact that the Toronto Maple Leafs have lost to the Bruins twice in a row, but what they never seem to acknowledge is:
a) The Leafs would have won both series if Nazem Kadri was a bit less of an unhinged maniac.
b) The Leafs were a top team in both years, and the fact that they had to play another top team because the NHL has an incredibly unfair and stupid seeding system that often pits two of the best teams in the NHL against each other in the first round.
Since the Atlantic Division features three of the NHL’s best teams again this year, there is only one thing the Toronto Maple Leafs can do to avoid another dumb first round coin-flip:
Win the division.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Passing Tampa
First things first: in life, and in the bubble of hockey talk that we live in, people don’t believe anything unless it already happened.
Even though the Lightning look primed for massive regression, no one will believe it until it actually happens. The Leafs are on their way up though – every single one of their players is either in their prime or about to peak.
On the other hand, Tampa has already probably seen the best season from their entire core, save possibly Braydon Point (though he has been amazing, I think the people who look at one or two years of data and declare him superior to Mitch Marner are going to look extremely wrong in another year or two).
The Tampa blue-line is their weakness and Toronto’s is better. Hedman and Rielly are more or less a push, but after that, things favor the Leafs pretty heavily.
Mcdonagh’s contract looks Patrick Marleau-esque and he’s overpaid before it even kicks in. He is definitely not as good as Muzzin or Barrie.
Sergachev is good and getting better, he is superior offensively to Dermott, but Dermott doesn’t really need to provide any offense on the Leafs, so that’s close to a push. Either way, Muzzin is significantly better than Sergachev.
The rest of Tampa’s blue line is borderline crap, and the Leafs will probably still upgrade theirs, but it’s hard to complain about a Rielly, Barrie, Muzzin, Dermott top-four with a Timothy Liljegren and Rasmus Sandin on the way.
Last year, the Leafs and Tampa both had roughly the same 5v5 shot-attempts percentage. It was on the PP where Tampa really separated themselves.
Tampa scored 26 more goals than Toronto, and had a ridiculous 28% PP percentage. The Leafs PP was just as good in all the things that lead to goals, but they got really unlucky.
Tampa won’t maintain their luck, while the Leafs won’t maintain their bad luck. The Leafs power play is insane, and the odds of them scoring almost 30 goals less than any other team were probably close to zero. This is where Tampa separated themselves from the competition, but it’s going to be nearly impossible to replicate.
Another thing that needs to be said: in the NHL, one-goal games are a total coin-flip. The parity caused by the salary cap makes it so that in a one-goal game, no one really has an advantage. Like shooting percentage, this is something that will really help a team, but which they have almost no control over.
The Lightning were 11-3 last year in one-goal games. That’s preposterous. They might repeat that, but they can’t count on it as it was a total fluke.
By contrast, the Leafs were 6-5. (hockey-reference.com).
A lot of people, after the Leafs failed to get more points in the standings last year than they did the year before despite adding John Tavares, questioned why that was. Well the reason is obvious. The previous year, the Leafs went 13-6 in one-goal games. They overachieved like mad. The fact they went about .500 in one-goal games last year but still almost got the same points, actually does show how their roster improved.
Bottom line:
Tampa can’t replicate their one-goal game record, or their power-play. They were a team that finished nearly 20 points ahead of second place, and it’s because everything went right for them.
This year, they’re another year past their prime, while the younger Leafs core is another year closer to theirs. And, let’s not forget, that last year the Leafs didn’t dress their optimal roster for a single game.
Toronto will finish ahead of Tampa this season.