The Toronto Maple Leafs are struggling defensively.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have been struggling defensively during the seasons start. After 11 games played they have allowed 38 goals against, most of the league. While goaltenders Andersen and back-up Hutchinson haven’t been on top of their game with a combined 0.898 save percentage, they’re not entirely to blame.
Despite having a good possession rate of 52.94% average, they don’t post that great defensive numbers; allowing 32 shots per 60 minutes for instance. With an HDCF% rating of 47.37%, it’s not surprising they have the third-highest goals against per 60 minutes rating of 3.19 (courtesy of naturalstattrick).
Star defenseman Morgan Rielly has not been playing as good as last year. Yes, he’s on a point per game pace, which is great, but his overall game hasn’t been eying as good as before.
Paired with newly acquired Cody Ceci, one cannot help to seek a correlation. Could Ceci be the reason Rielly hasn’t been good enough yet? It’s what we’ve pondered about as well at Editor in Leaf and that’s why for this weeks roundtable the writing staff came together to answer the following question;
“Is it time to end the Cody Ceci experiment?”
Let’s find out.