Toronto Maple Leafs Power-Play So Good, So Unlucky

The Toronto Maple Leafs had one of the NHL’s best power-plays last year.

This might come as a surprise, because one of the dumbest narratives in the NHL last year was that the Toronto Maple Leafs power-play was bad because it was “too predictable.”

I didn’t know whether to cringe or laugh every time I heard someone say that, which was a lot.

The facts are:

The Leafs were the 8th most efficient power-play in the NHL. They scored the 14th most goals, and had the least opportunities in the NHL. (Because they don’t take any penalties, they also don’t get to take advantage of the NHL’s derelict policy of even-up calls).

The Leafs power-play was a lot of things: exciting, effective, creative, fun to watch.  It did not suffer for predictability, however.  That, my friends, is just an excuse people applied to explain why it wasn’t better than it was.

Leafs Power-Play Just Unlucky

One of my favorite things is talking about luck because the responses are always hilarious – ranging from “luck doesn’t exist”  to “winners make their own luck.”   People just want to feel like they have more control than they do, it’s understandable.

Unfortunately, luck does exist, and it has a bigger effect on hockey games than anything else.

Especially in the a professional league where the margins between  players and teams are razor thin.

Luck – good or bad – can be defined as any result that defies probabilities.

The Toronto Maple Leafs power-play statistics are so damned good that the probabilities suggest they should have had the best power-play in the NHL. Since they didn’t, they were unlucky.

Check this:

The Leafs were first in the NHL in expected power-play goals.

Their 113 Shot-Attempts/ 60 were BY FAR the best in the NHL, with San Jose coming in second with 107/60.

The Leafs were first in the NHL in shots per hour, producing three more than the next best team, and 10 more than the 10th place team.

The results just weren’t there, but they should have been.  “Expected Goals” will predict the future far better than actual goals, and the Leafs led the NHL in power-play expected goals by two goals per 60 minutes over the second place team.

Here is the one thing you should pay attention to if you ignore everything else I have said so far: The Toronto Maple Leafs created 76 scoring-chances per 60 minutes of power-play time.  The San Jose sharks were second in the NHL with 57.64 scoring-chances per 60. (All stats from naturalstattrick.com).

That’s nearly a difference of 20 scoring chances per hour.

So why didn’t the Leafs score more?  Certainly not because of their “predictable” power-play (the lazy narrative to end all narratives).

It was because of shooting percentage.  At the NHL level, it’s the great equalizer.  Players can’t control it and sometimes goalies just dominate you and there’s nothing you can do – it is literally a luck-based phenomenon that you can’t control.

Tampa scored on 21.64% of their shots.  That means that they scored more than one in five shots, a rate that ins as incredible as it is unrepeatable.

The Leafs, despite actually having the best power-play in the NHL, were 20th with a 12% shooting percentage.

It’s true that the results do not reflect what the stats say they should, but that is just bad luck. It happens.  “Goals” are a lot smaller of a sample size than shots, shot-attempts or scoring chances, and so have much, much less predictive power.

If you’re looking for optimism this season, consider this: The Leafs and Lightning were separated by only 13 5v5 goals, and the 28 points in the standings that separated the two of them was almost entirely because of the power-play.

If we are looking at the best to predict the future: The Toronto Maple Leafs have the best power-play in the NHL, so they should be able to rectify that difference without much of a problem.