Currently, the Toronto Maple Leafs most likely first-round opponent is the Tampa Bay Lightning, pegged at 38% per Micah Blake McCurdy’s model.
Here, we will address why most of the people who would rather play Boston over Tampa Bay are egregiously wrong in their assessment of Tampa Bay, why Tampa is the outright most dominant team in the NHL and why the Toronto Maple Leafs should not be in favor of playing the lightning in the first round.
First off, I would like to point out that the Lightning did start off slow in terms of being in the standings but they appeared worse for some key reasons which we will cover. But since the slow start in terms of standings points, they are 22-2-1 on an absolute tear, back to the team before the playoffs last season.
It is also important to note that many will outright admit that the Lightning is complete chokers and will never win anything, the Lightning literally lost to the Blue Jackets in one week of hockey from April 10, 2019, to April 16, 2019.
When we have more than an 82 game sample of this team showing they are elite, I fail to see the rationale in discounting the 82+ games in place of one week’s worth of hockey.
Toronto Maple Leafs vs Lightning
Think about it this way, this past December and January, Frederik Andersen has struggled mightily, posting a SV% of under 900% which is not the usual quality for Andersen. Most fans were optimistic that he will come back from this slump given his past success and consistency, and so far, that has been the case.
This situation can be similar to the situation with Tampa Bay in the playoffs, it is always better to value the larger sample, this is a fact in all aspects of life.
Back to the few reasons why Tampa had struggled out of the gate until they started their dominant run almost at the same time the Leafs began their very own.
The most obvious reason the team struggled at the beginning of the season was Andrei Vasilevskiy was absolutely atrocious, probably worse than Michael Hutchinson was for the Leafs. We all know the past Vezina trophy winner is not as bad as he started the season out to be, and he has proved that by climbing to above average on the season.
The second reason the team struggled was due to them having the toughest schedule at the time according to ESPN’s strength of schedule.
With all this said, the team did lose games but was still above .500 and their underlying predictive metrics noted that they were still playing very well. Some of the Lightning players even claimed that some adversity can be beneficial for their inner stability as a team.
Catching me off-guard while writing this piece, Tampa Bay decided they wanted to get even better than they already are and traded for 28-year-old Blake Coleman who is such a fantastic player in his own right. I say with confidence that Coleman is a first-line level forward on a great value cap hit. You can read articles on Coleman here.
(We have had several pieces at EditorInLeaf on Coleman as a trade target for good reason)
Moving on, for further analysis, let’s breakdown Tampa Bay’s overall offensive and defensive game individually to get a better look at how they stack up against the rest of the league.