The Toronto Maple Leafs have had a weird start to the season, but one that is going to help them long-term.
We may not know the truth for years, but it’s pretty well established folk-lore by now that Toronto Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas wanted to fire Mike Babcock in the summer and was blocked by someone – probably Larry Tanenbaum – from doing it.
If that is the case – and I would bet a lot of money that that is the case – the Leafs early season losing streak was a blessing in disguise.
Everyone knew Babcock should have been fired last spring, and now that he’s gone so much the better.
The Leafs look like a brand new team under Sheldon Keefe – and one who actually plays in the way in which they were built.
Everything about the Leafs since Keefe took over is positive – except their record which is 4-3 and not good enough to get them to the Playoffs.
But don’t worry.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are Making the Playoffs
And don’t listen to some of those odds calculators that put their odds under 40% – those algorithms consider the early season record with far too much weight.
But this Leafs team only just played it’s first healthy game of the season the other night (and promptly lost Andreas Johnson to the LTIR).
They had sub-900 goaltending for the first two months of the year.
Their power-play hasn’t gotten going.
Their back-up is 0-6 (contrary to the over-emotional mob mentality of some, Hutchinson isn’t the worst goalie in NHL history, and this is a pretty random record. A worse goalie than Hutch is not likely to ever do this bad over any six game stretch).
Under Sheldon Keefe they’ve shot under 7% as a team.
And yet, they remain one of the NHL’s most talented teams. They have a goals-for percentage of 38% during tie-games. That can’t last. It’s impossible.
They’ve also barely scored the first goals in any game.
To a lot of people they’ll say these are excuses. But what they are is weird things that can’t continue to happen.
Yeah, it looks weird that the Leafs almost never score first, but while some games they definitely just sucked, most of the time that’s pretty random.
It’s obviously cathartic to get emotional but the Toronto Maple Leafs are not even close to as bad as they seem. Even under Keefe their record should be closer to 7-0 than 4-3. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).
Eventually this team’s star players start scoring at their career average shooting percentage and the power-play gets hot.
Look out when that happens.
I have maintained since the summer that the Toronto Maple Leafs have built the best roster in the salary cap era and I stand by that. There’s lots of things that I regret saying, and I’m a big believer that it’s important to change your mind when you get new information.
But all the information I have tells me the Leafs are still contenders and that the only thing they really need to right their ship is time.
Look, I know people hate to be told it’s luck and not effort, but so many random things have gone against this team that it’s just common sense to see that they’ll turn around. I understand the emotional tendency towards negativity, but this team is worth being positive about.