Toronto Maple Leafs Criminally Underrated on NHL Position Ranking Lists

The Toronto Maple Leafs have the best roster in the NHL.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have got top-five players at every position, and they’re the deepest, most talented team in the NHL.

Just not according to NHL.com whose annual top rankings by position have been released.

In them, the Leafs do not fare well.

Toronto Maple Leafs Underrated

It’s not worth getting worked up about these lists.  Who knows what criteria they use?  Definitely not solid statistical analysis.

The main thing is that they almost have to be intentionally wrong in order to stir up controversy and articles like this.  God help them if they mean it and aren’t being controversial on purpose, because they are horrible.

I mean, I know I’m doing exactly what they want, but I can’t help myself.

The lists are just so bad.

They’re objectively wrong because clearly they are reputation based and not statistically based.  Secondly, there is clearly an anti-Toronto bias.

It makes sense – the Leafs are the league’s most popular team, so riling up their fan base with nonsensical claims like “Frederik Andersen isn’t a top-ten goalie” is just good business.

You could have made a good case for Freddie Andersen winning the Vezina in either of the lat two years – he faces an incredible amount of rubber playing on a run-and-gun team with no defense to speak of.

The best goalie analyst I know of suggested that Carey Price should have won last year’s Vezina, but the best stats writers I know suggested it should have been Andersen.

At the very least, the idea that Andersen isn’t a top ten goalie is so ridiculous they wouldn’t even print it in the National Post.

As for their other lists, it’s a shame it’s electronic and they can’t be put to better use as various types of paper.

Morgan Rielly led the NHL in 5v5 points and goals as a defenseman, nearly posted a point-per-game and did it all while attached at the hip to one of the worst players in the NHL.

No other top defeneseman in the NHL had such a bad partner, and yet Rielly was still robbed of a much deserved Norris nomination by a media who are afraid of looking like they favor the Leafs.

And somehow the NHL.com list has him as the 7th best in the league. It’s insulting.

Then again, they have Erik Karlsson at 4th, so good-bye credibility.  Having Karlsson 4th is like writing up a list of the best ever songwriters and forgetting about Bob Dylan.

I mean, Karlsson is probably a top 3-5 all-time defenseman and somehow they think there’s three players better than him in the NHL right now?  Even though if you ignored position and ranked every player in the league, he should be #2 behind Connor McDavid.

I’m not even going to get into the other two lists.  Was Matthews ranked as the second best centre – which is what he is due to the fact that he is literally the best goal scorer in hockey?

What do you think?

Of course he wasn’t.