Leafs Special Teams
The Toronto Maple Leafs under Sheldon Keefe have improved their special teams and that is very important. Under Mike Babcock the Leafs power play and penalty kill both ranked towards the bottom of the league at the time.
Bring in Sheldon Keefe and the assistant coaches do their job, their power play sky rockets and their penalty kill gets better especially with Hyman, and Marner returning from injury at the time.
As of right now through 49 games between Babcock and Keefe the Toronto Maple Leafs special teams look like this.
Power play ranked 5th in the league 33/136 (24.3%)
Penalty kill ranked 25th in the league 106/139 (76.3%)
Despite the Toronto Maple Leafs penalty kill still towards the bottom of the league, they are missing Jake Muzzin still and their penalty kill to begin the season with Mike Babcock was horrendous. All in all it has improved but it has improved much slower than their power play.
(special teams stats from foxsports.com)
Obviously its common sense, if they continue their success on the special teams they will win more games they lose. So if you throw in a mix of special team success and staying healthy along with injured players returning to the lineup, this Toronto Maple Leafs team can go on a great run again just like they did during that 10 game point streak.
So as of right now the Toronto Maple Leafs have played 49 games this season and they have 33 games remaining to string some lengthy win and point streaks together.
It all starts up again on January 27th against the Nashville Predators and we could potentially see Jake Muzzin make a return to the lineup. Will there also be a trade by the 27th? We will have to wait and see about that.