The Toronto Maple Leafs are an improved team after the NHL’s free-agency period.
Joe Thonton and Wayne Simmonds are nice additions, but they don’t move the needle at all (or are unlikely to, at any rate). The real reason the Leafs are a better team than they were a few weeks ago is T.J Brode. That is a huge addition.
The rest of it? Its marginal, at best. But that’s OK because the Leafs were already a very good team. After Keefe took over, their team stats were superior to Boston and close to Tampa and Los Vegas. They finished eighth overall under Keefe despite playing about half their games without Rielly and another half of those without Muzzin.
That means they were already a contender. That they finished 8th under Keefe with the 24th rated goaltending means they are a team on the rise. The fact that they added T.J Brodie makes them better, but the fact that they were in competition for the President’s Trophy in games where Michael Hutchinson didn’t start means they already were. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).
But there are two games that really show how good they can be.
Toronto Maple Leafs vs Columbus
I have been disappointed to see that a team that has been, and will be a Cup Contender for years to come, is being underrated because of a combination of anti-Toronto media bias and recency bias based on bizarre results from a short sample size.
Sure, its annoying that the Leafs lost to Columbus, but they lost because their biggest strength – goal scoring – went randomly cold. The Blue Jackets posted a 98% 5v5 save percentage in a five game series, something that is impossible to replicate, and extremely fluky. Make no mistake, the Leafs did not struggle to get high quality chances, and they were not stopped by good defense.
They were randomly beaten by unsustainable goaltending. It happens.
But instead of basing our view on the results of one game – game five – why not look to two games to see how good the Toronto Maple Leafs actually can be?
In game two, the Leafs put on a clinic. I have watched almost every Leafs game since 1995 and that is, by far, the most dominant performance I’ve ever seen one NHL team have against another.
The Leafs controlled over 60% of the total puck possession, including a second period that saw them get over 70% of the shot-attempts and 89% of the total shots. The Leafs ended up winning 3-0 but the game easily could have been 9 or ten to nothing if not for the Columbus Goalie.
Two games later, in game four, the Leafs were down by three goals with time running out. Since they lost the next game, this game was never given the codification of being the all-time classic that it deserved.
The Toronto Maple Leafs, who scored only ten goals across five games, scored 30% of their series total in one four minutes stretch (and 40% in 18 minutes). The Leafs may not have won the Stanley Cup, but the NHL playoff tournament did not see anything comparable to the Leafs scoring three goals with the goalie pulled to stave off elimination.
Anything you’d ever question about a losing team – heart, effort, compete, leadership etc. – has to be credited to the Leafs for that performance, and its a shame that the subsequent game prevented that from being acknowledged.
When I look at how I think this team will perform next year, its’ not the addition of Brodie or Thornton that makes me believe in the roster. Its the fact that I’ve seen this team dominate another NHL team like they were playing a practice game against an OHL team, and I’ve seen them come back from the dead with a 99% chance of losing as the third period winds down.
To suggest that bringing in Joe Thornton is an indictment of the current team’s leadership is to ignore the biggest accomplishment of this group so far. The Leafs haven’t yet won anything of value, but these two events, both of which have been glossed over because they didn’t end up winning the series, show that they will.