It would be easy to be down on the Toronto Maple Leafs.
One could look at their schedule, their record, a couple of notorious sections of recent games, and build a (very stupid) case that the Toronto Maple Leafs are a flawed team with a lot of troubles.
In reality, however, they are a team on the verge of greatness.
They aren’t a perfect team, and, like anyone in a salary cap world, they’ve got their issues. But they are very, very close to being the best team in the NHL.
Toronto Maple Leafs Flirting with Greatness
One could look at last night’s 90 second stretch where the Toronto Maple Leafs allowed three goals and say that “this doesn’t happen to good teams.”
They’d be wrong.
What that is, is a fluke occurrence that will rarely ever happen to anyone, but could happen to anyone.
One could look at the loss to Montreal, a similar, but slightly more protracted timeframe, with the same result.
But team’s don’t blow 4-1 leads in the 3rd period often enough to worry about it when it happens. (And this team features about 85% turnover since it last happened).
You could bring up the fact that the Leafs lost to the Blues, Capitals, and Lightning, while beating only bad teams. I assure you this is nothing but a total fluke, and that anyone attempting to draw such conclusions based on a seven game chunk of the schedule is worse than a charlatan.
Sure, there’s things that you could worry about: Mike Babcock, Cody Ceci, Michael Hutchinson come to mind. But in reality, we’re talking about bit players that might add up to six points either way over the course of the season.
Like I said, this is a great team on the verge of dominance.
The Leafs lost to the Caps, but realistically, anytime you lose because of a one-in-five-hundred occurrence, you can’t be too upset.
In fact, losing by a goal when you had five less power-plays than your opponent is essentially a win.
If you want to put a positive spin on this, think about this: the Toronto Maple Leafs have played well enough so that they could easily have a 6-1 record, without changing anything. A few key saves here and there, and we’re talking about a team that is on pace for 70 wins.
So let’s all calm down and look at some stats.
1. The Leafs are getting 5 more shot-attempts per game than the second best team.
2. They have a team possession rating of 55%, 3rd in the NHL.
3. They are destroying the second place team in scoring chances created.
4. Despite their shooting talent, they are shooting under 9% (This will self-correct big time).
5. They have a team save percentage under 89%. (Again, this is guaranteed to self-correct).
6. Despite a very similar record, the Lightning lead the NHL in PDO. The Leafs are 25th.
PDO measures luck, because over time, given enough of a sample size, a team will almost always have a save and shooting percentage that equals 100. The Leafs currently sit at 97.3, which is extremely unlucky, given the possible ranges of the measurement. (All stats from this article are for 5v5 and are from naturalstattrick.com).
So please don’t complain that this team “isn’t build right,” or that they “aren’t balanced enough,” or really, about anything.
Like I said at the start, no team is perfect. The Toronto Maple Leafs have the best team in the NHL, and the stats bear this out. The results will come in time.
The Leafs are in the “minor tinkering phase.” They should be extremely happy with their start to the season.
If they had just received league average goaltending, (which they are all but guaranteed to eventually receive) they might have a perfect record.