Will the Toronto Maple Leafs Playing Style Work in the Playoffs?

The Toronto Maple Leafs have been the best team in the NHL since they fired Mike Babcock.

This isn’t surprising, since many amateur coaches, including myself, were able to pinpoint about a dozen terrible things the former Toronto Maple Leafs coach was doing that were easily correctable.

Sheldon Keefe has been nice and everything, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that playing Cody Ceci on the top pairing was a pretty stupid idea. (And that’s being generous).

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that a team should play to it’s strengths. or that they should sometimes make in-game strategical adjustments, or to understand that maybe you shouldn’t rely on a Patrick Marleau who’s scored at a 4th line rate all season to help you score in the playoffs.

I could go on all-day about Mike Babcock and the brutal decisions he made, but I already have. The reason we’re here today, however, is to figure out if the Toronto Maple Leafs high-octane possession-heavy style can work in the playoffs.

Toronto Maple Leafs Play Style and the Playoffs

Here’s a simple test to figure out if the Leafs style will work in the playoffs:

Is it working in the regular season?

It is? OK, then it will work in the playoffs.

End of story.

Except it’s not. It most definitely shouldn’t even be a question, because well, it’s not polite to say. Suffice to say that people love a good narrative, even if it is nonsensical. Grown adults do wake up every morning and check their horoscopes, after-all. Do they care that science has proven astrology to be a completely fraudulent pseudoscience?

They do not.

Many people choose to believe that the NHL Playoffs are vastly different from the regulars season, and no amount of proof will sway them on the topic. While there may be small changes in the way the games are called, or coached, nothing occurs that is so major that it would render a successful regular season strategy unsuccessful.

The narrative is that the NHL Playoffs are a different game. Teams play harder, and it’s harder to win. The defense clamps down and scoring becomes impossible.

None of this, of course, is backed up by facts, but that hasn’t stopped it from being widely believed.

If NHL Playoff games seem more intense, it’s because you, the viewer, care about the result more. It’s simple confirmation bias.

In a league where two-thirds of the players are playing for their professional lives on a night-to-night basis, does it make any sense that they’d have an extra gear for the Playoffs?

Like, they only try 90% as hard to earn a new contract and become a millionaire during regular games than they do in the post-season tournament where they don’t get paid?

Sure, it’s a long season and teams occasionally take a night off. The travel, lack of sleep and accumulative injuries demand it. But generally speaking, playing in a pro league is so demanding that if you don’t do your best every night, you’re out of a job.

Do players really try harder in the games they aren’t being paid for? when their jobs are on the line every single night? It’s highly doubtful.

Now maybe the game is called differently and it’s harder to get a penalty. The league should be embarrassed if the math proves this to be true, as the rules should be the rules no matter what.

I was going to research it, then I realized it wasn’t necessary. This is because the NHL’s rule book might as well not even exist. Excepting egregious fouls, the league routinely keeps penalties even.

If there are less penalties in the Playoffs, you can at least bet they’ll remain mostly even. This greatly benefits teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs who tend to dominate at 5v5.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Style Will Work in the Playoffs

But is defense going to be tighter? Not really. If a team could tighten up their play to shut-down the Leafs, they wouldn’t hold off until the playoffs to try and do it. If it could be done, it’d be done as soon as it was possible to do so.

If goals go down in the playoffs, part of that is less penalties, but part of that is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a coach believes that games get tighter, he might coach not to lose, instead of to win.

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That’s what Babcock did. This is the guy with a boatload of talent on his bench who felt the need to line-match the Columbus Blue Jackets in 3 on 3 overtime, in October.

The Leafs didn’t make it anywhere by playing traditional, acceptable, Playoff Style Hockey. They might not make it anywhere this year, but if they don’t, it’s probably because only one team in 16 wins. It won’ t have anything to do with their roster’s inability to body check, fight, or “play heavy.”

There is absolutely no logic or math behind the idea that the Toronto Maple Leafs style won’t work in the playoffs.

In hockey, the team with the best players has the best chance of winning. Having your best players intentionally change their style to play in a way that is more in line with traditional hockey ideals is pretty dumb, but it’s so common an idea no one even bothers to question it.

If Auston Matthews trades chances with another team, he’s going to score on more of his chances than they will most of the time. This is true no matter what month the game is occurring in.

The idea that the Playoffs are a “different game,” is pure nonsense. You just care more about the result and it seems that way. Just because most teams buy into the idea that they have to play tighter hockey doesn’t mean that’s the best way to play.

In fact, according to game theory, playing in a different way than your opponents expect is often an optimal strategy.

It’s still hockey. The best team is still the most likely to win.

But the main thing is this: If a certain style works in the regular season, it will work in the playoffs. If a team knows how to defend against a Matthews-Marner-Tavares-Nylander attack, trust me, they won’t wait until the Spring to use it.