The Toronto Maple Leafs didn’t have the best October.
After a rocky start – results wise – the new NHL seasons, the Toronto Maple Leafs will finish the month 6-5-3.
I suppose when you enter the season expected to be one of the top teams, that isn’t a very good record.
It is, however, a good record for a team that faced the level of adversity the Leafs faced. (That’s sports adversity, just for the record, which is mild and very much exaggerated compared to the real life kind).
Toronto Maple Leafs in October
The Leafs played games this month, and six of them were without Captain and top ten NHL player John Tavares.
14 of them were without Zach Hyman, 13 of them were without Travis Dermott and four of them were without Freddie Andersen.
Heck, even in their last game, Jake Muzzin only played about four minutes before exiting with a charlie horse. (Not believed to be serious).
“Injuries are not an excuse” is the dumbest cliche in sports – and that is saying a lot, since nothing on earth has as many dumb cliches as sports do.
The fact is, injuries are the main thing that tends to separate teams in a professional league – especially one with a parity inducing salary cap.
Playing four games without four key players is a massive deal. If you take key players off any team (including their best player, and their starting goalie) they are not likely to be a playoff team.
Knowing that, the Toronto Maple Leafs finishing the month one game over .500 is a solid accomplishment.
Add in the fact that they turned over about a third of their roster in the summer, and their slow start makes a lot of sense.
But I am not worried.
The odds are they turn it around, because the odds are they get a lot healthier. Additionally, they are a team with the best centre depth in the NHL, and the best right-wing depth in the NHL. (all stats from naturalstattrick.com).
Their defense features a minimum of three of the top 30 defenseman in the game (with Dermott on his way), and they’ve got a Vezina worthy goalie in Andersen.
With Tavaers, Marner, Nylander, Matthews, Rielly, Muzzin, Barrie and Andersen, the Leafs can match any team’s list of elite players.
With Kapanen, Kerfoot, Johnsson, Hyman, Dermott, Mikheyev and Moore in auxiliary roles, the Leafs are incredibly deep too.
But what really suggests the Leafs will improve is their statistics. Given their injuries, their Corsi rating is likely going to get better, and it’s already 6th best in the NHL.
That suggests that they are much better than their record. Then there is the fact that they are 12th in the NHL in shooting percentage despite the talent on their roster. That’s going to go up too.
Finally their save percentage is under .900 for the month. It would be extremely improbable for this to stay under 90%.
Finishing the month over .500 while missing between two and four core players every night is impressive enough, but doing it with a PDO (combined save and shooting percentage) that ranks 22nd in the league is even more impressive.
Literally everything we are able to measure suggests that the Toronto Maple Leafs will improve, so there is really nothing to worry about. They started the season as Stanley Cup contenders, and that has not changed.
The five reasons not to worry are 1) injuries 2) shooting percentage 3) save percentage 4) high Corsi 5) great roster.
If you want my advice (and why else would you be here?) Lay off the negativity and try to enjoy the season, it’s going to be a blast.