A Toronto Maple Leafs Frederik Andersen Hot Take
By Jeff Borsuk
The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t lived up to expectations and many blame their struggles on goaltending. We explain why Frederik Andersen isn’t a problem.
The Toronto Maple Leafs fanbase can be very vocal and passionate on social media. It takes many forms. Recently, the noise has been the placing of blame for the difficulties the Leafs had over their last stretch of games.
Listening to the fans on social media would have you believe that there are two people who have caused the Maple Leafs to stumble. Fingers are pointed at the team’s starting goalie Frederik Andersen and general manager Kyle Dubas. Simply put, those people are wrong.
Frederik Andersen
There’s no doubt that Andersen has underperformed. He has proven that he can be one of the best goalies in the league on any given night. After all, this was the first year that he’s been recognized by being named to an All-Star game.
His stats tell the tale of a player who is having the worst season of his career. After playing three consecutive campaigns of taking the net in at least 60 games, his numbers have dropped. In 47 games played this season, Andersen has faced 1,431 shots and let 128 of them get past him for a goal.
He owns a save percentage of .906 and a goals-against-average of 2.98. That’s in contrast to his career .916 save percentage and 2.64 goals-against-average.
Some may attribute his slide in dominance to his workload and the possibility that he has now reached 30 years old. That certainly isn’t the only problem.
On a night when the hockey world had a big laugh at the Leafs expense thanks to their loss to the Toronto Marlies Zamboni driver, a lot was revealed. When the Carolina Hurricanes managed to beat Toronto with David Ayres it exposed a bigger problem.