The Toronto Maple Leafs will face off against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Sunday August 2nd to kick-off their best of five play-in series.
The Toronto Maple Leafs will try to make the playoffs proper by defeating a team that finished with the same amount of points as they did.
They will be going up against a team that eliminated the Tampa Bay Lightning from last year’s playoffs, so things should be pretty interesting, although I have no doubt that the Leafs will prevail.
The regular season wasn’t the best for the Leafs, but they did finish 8th overall from the day they switched coaches, which is pretty good for a constantly injured team, learning a new system and playing with one to five players out of the lineup every night.
As we gear up for the playoffs, we’ve been working on grading the team’s players, and last week we released the grades for the forwards.
Today we will do defense and goalies.
The Leafs blue-line takes a lot of heat, much of it unfair. While no one was able to put together an award winning year this seasons, the Toronto Maple Leafs had quite a few strong performances.