There’s No Reason Why the Toronto Maple Leafs Should Lose in the Qualifying Round

The Toronto Maple Leafs should be able to beat the Blue Jackets in the qualifying round

Going into the start of the season, no one expected the Toronto Maple Leafs to be 8th in their conference. Yet, here they are taking on the 9th seeded Columbus Blue Jackets in the qualifying round to get into the first round of the playoffs.

In the regular season, they went 1-1 against the Blue Jackets beating them 4-1 on the road on October 4th and losing in overtime 4-3 at home 17 days later.

They were set to play them again on March 21st at Scotiabank Arena but as we all know, the Coronavirus prevented that.

Toronto Maple Leafs Should be Favored

Despite splitting the series, the Leafs should be able to beat the Blue Jackets and get past the qualifying round.

The Leafs possess arguably the league’s best offense.

Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and the list keeps going. The Leafs possess great offensive defencemen in Morgan Rielly and while he has struggled at times this season, Tyson Barrie can still excel on the offensive side of the ice.

Meanwhile, the Blue Jackets struggle to score goals as according to stats from nhl.com, they average just 2.57 goals a game, the fourth-worst mark in the league.

their offensive misfortunes, their defense is what has gotten them this far as they have the fourth-best goals against average of 2.61.

Head coach Sheldon Keefe has stated that at times, he might put John Tavares, Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner out on the ice at the same time.

While the Blue Jackets have been lauded for their defense which contains the likes of a now healthy Seth Jones and Zach Werenski, this “nuclear line” as Keefe calls it, may be too much for the Blue Jackets defensive corps to handle.

Between the pipes, the Leafs have a bigger advantage, even with their defense not being the strongest unit.

Frederik Andersen is far more experienced than the youth goaltenders the Blue Jackets possess in Elvis Merzlikins and Joonas Korpisalo.

While Andersen is the clear number one starter for the Leafs, Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella has a bit of a dilemma at his hands in regards to who he should start.

While the Toronto Maple Leafs and Blue Jackets have the same amount of points and are only one place apart from each other in the standings, the Leafs are the better team and there’s no reason why they should be packing things up after the qualifying round.

There is no acceptable reason for them to lose this series.