Terrible Toronto Maple Leafs Performance Nothing to Worry About

The Toronto Maple Leafs have ruined their fans.

Like a dog that has been beaten and cannot trust his new owner, the majority of Toronto Maple Leafs fans do not seem to believe in the roster that Brendan Shanahan and Kyle Dubas have built.

They have been witness to perhaps the worst run, worst performing professional sports team of all time, so who could blame them for their distrust and cynicism?

As an Original Six team, it has galled to see expansion team after expansion team surpass the Leafs. To see countless players bloom on other teams after being traded,  or the draft picks that could have been used to get generational players wasted on ill advised late season additions.

Not only did the fans of the Leafs endure 50+ years of losing, but the team has constantly shot themselves in the foot while doing it.

New Toronto Maple Leafs Management Deserves a Chance

So now that the team is good, it’s not exactly the team people were expecting. The GM is a rookie and younger than some of the players.  They are aggressively deviating from several hockey norms, and people are nervous.

They’ve waited 50 years for an Auston Matthews / John Tavares roster and aren’t sure the team is going in the right direction.

The team wants more offensive defenseman than the average fan probably thinks is a good idea. They don’t seem to be interested in grinders.  They prioritize offense and talent over size and defense.

They don’t seem to be concerned with what people think, and often make moves that counter ‘common sense’ arguments from fans and the media.  (Nylander, Marincin, trading another first, dressing no grinders or defensive defensemen, etc.)

The Leafs Fan believes that the team needs to tighten up on defense and will have trouble playing against heavy teams in the playoffs (ignoring that they took the Bruins to game seven twice in a row, and in last year’s series outplayed them at 5v5).

The fans should buy into this team.  They might not win it all – hockey is a pretty random game when it comes to playoff time – but they are unquestionably on the right track.

Prior to the their recent losing streak, the Toronto Maple Leafs were the NHL’s best team for 22 games.  That is more than a quarter of the season.

Even if we include the last three games, the Leafs are getting 53.4% of the high danger scoring chances, and they are scoring 54% of the goals.   These are top-five marks in the entire NHL.

What is crazy though, is that the Leafs – near the top of the league since Keefe took over – are actually 20th in save percentage over this time.  It is pretty rare to perform so far above your save percentage ranking, and the fact that the Leafs are doing that suggests that they are a very good team indeed.

If you’re one of the top five teams in the NHL, and then you suddenly start getting top ten goaltending, you’re virtually unstoppable.  I don’t think anyone reading this doubts that Andersen is a top ten goalie in the NHL.

The Leafs style of play will work.  It will work in the regular season and in the playoffs.  Victory is not assured, but what is assured is that if the Leafs do lose (and everyone’s odds of not winning the Cup are very high) it won’t be because of their play style.

We know for a fact that if you get 53.4 of the high danger scoring attempts, and you employ such players as Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Mitch Marner and William Nylander, as well as Tyson Barrie and Morgan Rielly, you will outscore your opponents most of the time. (statsnaturalstattrick.com).

Sometimes you get games like last nights – I don’t know how many shots they finished with, but by the time they had eight goals, the Panthers were scoring on 33% of their shots.

The Leafs put almost 50 shots on net.  It wasn’t a pretty game, but it’s one they aren’t usually going to lose 8-4.  Now I’m not saying that that is the ideal way this team should play, only that occasionally all teams have bad games but when the Leafs have theirs they seem to give themselves a chance to win.

The Leafs played pretty crappy, but even a borderline performance from their goalie last night probably wins them the game.  That doesn’t excuse it, it just means that if you’re wondering how the team is gonna do in the future, the fact that they usually come close to winning even their bad games is encouraging.

You can’t predict the future, but this roster is fun, it’s dynamic and its’ potential is massive. I think that while the Leafs as an entity deserve no benefit of the doubt, the new management wasn’t involved in those horrible teams or the things that undid them.

Enough has gone right since Brendan Shanahan has taken over the team that I believe he does deserve a hiatus to the cynicism that surrounds this team.  The team has just finished a quarter-season run as the best team in the NHL, I don’t think three losses, all of which could have been avoided by getting the goaltending this team usually gets, calls for the outright panic some people are displaying over a small losing streak.