Analyzing the Toronto Maple Leafs
If we go by total number of elite players, which is to say players that tend to have a significant impact on the results of games, the Toronto Maple Leafs, with seven, are the best team in the NHL. Of those players, the three most important ones are all still improving and are yet to peak.
If we go by depth, the Leafs are the best team in the NHL.
lf we go by recent results, they are not good at all.
So how does all this fit together? Do players decline? Improve? What is the chemistry like? There are too many unknown factors to call the Leafs the best team, but they’re certainly up there.
Last year the Avalanche led the NHL in PDO, and suddenly their everyone’s favorite, but a player by player comparison shows that the Leafs are a decidedly better team.
The Leafs goaltending is a bit of a question mark because Freddie Andersen is coming off his worst season ever, but the additions of Jack Campbell and Aaron Dell should lighten his load considerably.
Goaltending is a wildcard anyways. The Islanders are nearly worse than the Senators, but they hid that fact convincingly by getting high quality goaltending. The Leafs were the opposite – they put up team stats on par with Tampa (once Babcock was fired) and were destroyed by their lousy goaltending.
I trust Andersen to bounce back, but like injuries and shooting-percentage benders, goaltending is largely out of anyone’s control.
Just based on the forwards and defense, I think the Toronto Maple Leafs are, objectively speaking, a top team in the NHL. Of course there is a degree of subjectivity, and I also know that having failed to thus far win a playoff round, many people aren’t interested in anything else.
That’s fine.
The Leafs should be classified with Boston, Tampa, Las Vegas, Carolina and possibly Colorado as a group of teams that are a cut above the rest of the league.
If there is, as rumored, an All Canadian Division, it will hardly be fair. The Oilers have the elite talent to compete, but every other Canadian team is actively bad. Winnipeg isn’t even a playoff team if their goalie regresses at all (which is a given), and Montreal is OK at best.
The Leafs took Calgary’s best defenseman (by last year’s stats, at least) and the Canucks had a brutal offseason. Ottawa just hopes they finally win a draft lottery.
In the end, I realize that until the Toronto Maple Leafs win something, people will doubt their roster. But if you just focus on the roster as it appears on paper, the Leafs are among the best in the NHL.
Maybe the best.