The Toronto Maple Leafs are set to begin the new NHL season in an All Canadian Division.
Coming off a disappointing, but hopeful season, the Toronto Maple Leafs will be looking to transfer their potential energy into something they can sell off to the grid. The Leafs – if they had just gotten a little less unlucky against the Blue Jackets’ goalies – would be entering the new NHL season as the odds-on favorite to win the Stanley Cup. Hell, if they’d got by Columbus, we might be talking about their odds to repeat as Champs – who knows?
They’ve got the best paper roster in the NHL, but their reputation is damaged by four straight first-round (or Covid Equivalent) losses, that nobody but their most hardcore fans is interested in viewing with any context. (Which actually makes them come off looking pretty good, so its easy to ignore).
If we recall that the Leafs were dominant when they switched coaches, and only struggled afterwards when their two best defensemen went out long-term, we can see them in a positive light. We can also note that they were competing for the President’s Trophy in games not started by Michael Hutchinson, or that under Keefe they finished 8th overall even though they got about the 24th best 5v5 goaltending in the league.
So how do the Leafs rank against the NHL’s other contenders?
On the Outside Looking In
Before getting onto our top six Stanley Cup Contenders, we should talk about the teams that are just outside the fray. The teams who could potentially win a Cup, but who are not favorites to do so.
The fun (or maddening) thing about the NHL is that there always seems to be an underdog who overachieves. This year it was the Dallas Stars. No one in their right mind had them as a real contender, and yet they made it to the Final, and even pushed it to six games against a far superior opponent.
While there is always a possibility the Stars are for real, I highly doubt they will be one of the best teams in the league this year. They fit in with a bevy of decent, but not elite teams that could do well if everything goes right.
To my mind, Dallas sits outside the top six Cup Contenders with the Edmonton Oilers and St. Louis Blues as the three best non-contenders in the league. The Oilers have two of the best players in the entire world, but they are both bad defenders, their goalie situation is garbage and they’ve failed to put together a decent blueline.
Still, elite players drive results and the Oilers could do some damage. If I didn’t expect Draisaitl and McDavid to give back most of their gains by being so utterly useless on defense, I would have them higher.
The Blues won the Cup two years ago and always get overrated, but they just lost Alex Pietrangelo and who knows what can be expected of Vladimir Tarasenko at this point?
Another team that is OK but isn’t getting contender status is the Flyers. You can group them with Pittsburgh, Washington, and maybe even Minnesota (who I think will be better than people think) and the Jets, who I think can get by with their sick forwards as long as their goalie continues to be elite.
So to sum up: While not true contenders, the Oilers, Blues, Stars, Flyers, Penguins, Capitals, Jets and Wild all have a decent enough chance of winning the Cup next year, I just don’t consider them to be among the best of the contenders.
One wildcard team I’ll throw in here is the Sabres. They have Eichel and Dahlin and if they get any goaltending, that might just be good enough to make it far, or even to win if they get really lucky.
Contenders #5 and #6
The Boston Bruins have been the model NHL franchise for over a decade now. Though they only have one Stanley Cup, they’ve been to one other final and have been contenders, seemingly, forever.
The Bruins are getting older, and they probably won’t be gifted the incredible goaltending they got last season, but as long as they’ve got the Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak line (currently the best in the NHL) they’re going to be a good team.
Plus they’ve got leadership and experience, however much that counts. The Bruins look like they could fall off, but I won’t predict it, I’ll just assume they’re going to be great until they aren’t.
Still, last year I would have put them in the top three, and this year I’m putting them at six.
At #5 its the Carolina Hurricanes.
They have the NHL’s best defenseman, and they arguably have the AHL’s best defenseman too (though I’d give Sandin the nod over Jake Bean). They may or may not get the requisite goaltending, but they’ve got the best defenseman, one of the best centres (Aho), one of the best up and coming players (Svechnikov) and one of the best all-round and most underrated players (Terro Terravainen).
The Carolina Hurricanes could easily win the Stanley Cup this season, and so too could the Bruins.
Contenders #4 and #3
The Colorado Avalanche a good team that got better this summer. They’ve got Nathan MacKinnon, two great wingers and maybe the league’s best blue line (Makar, Graves, Girard, Johnson, Toews) as well as potentially one of the best rookies to enter the NHL this year in Bowen Byram.
There really isn’t much difference in the top four teams here, but the Avalanche were the only team in the NHL to finish top five in both 5v5 shooting and save percentage last season. Since this is almost certainly not a repeatable feat, you can expect them to decline slightly.
If Morgan Rielly rebounds, I don’t see their defense as much better than Toronto’s, and the two-years-younger Auston Matthews is going to be better than MacKinnon going forward (if he isn’t already). After MacKinnon, all three of Nylander, Marner and Tavares would be the Avalanches’ second best player, so I think the Leafs are the better team.
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The Las Vegas Golden Knights are the most successful team in NHL history.
They have existed for three years and won two division titles, made the playoffs 100% of the time, and won five playoff series, which saw them advance to the Cup Final in year one, and the Final Four in year three.
In year four they will once again be one of the NHL’s best teams. Given an absolute sweetheart deal in expansion, and then buoyed by the stupidity of teams like the Capitals and Ducks, the Golden Knights were ready-made contenders.
This year they’ve got one of the best rosters in the NHL, including Mark Stone (one of the top two or three best all-round players in the NHL) and two of the top five or six defensemen (Pietrangelo and Theodore).
I give the next two teams the slight edge because one of them won the Stanley Cup and the other has John Tavares as their third best player, which is something that, if you weren’t used to it as a matter of course, would probably be shocking.
The NHL’s Two Best Teams
Tampa has been to at least the Conference Final in three out of five years, winning the Cup last season and being the runner up one other time. In the other two years, they missed the playoffs and suffered a ridiculously unlucky loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets.
They could teach Leafs fans a thing or two about persistence in the face of poor results that were unearned. They are a walking embodiment of how probabilities work in real life: It was improbable for the best regular season team in recent NHL history to lose in the first round to a team as dubious as Columbus, but it happened.
The Leafs, you might recall, almost beat the Bruins twice in a game seven despite one of their better players being suspended both time. They lost to Columbus when Columbus set the NHL record for highest save percentage in NHL Playoff History, something the best defense of all time playing the worst offense of all time couldn’t hope to accomplish in a 100 tries.
It’s one of the flukiest things to ever happen in the NHL, but because it happened to the Leafs it’s just easier to laugh and say they suck.
I know full well that I have no credibility to say this, as an obviously pro-Leaf writer working at a site that explicitly and exclusively writes about the Toronto Maple Leafs, and as someone who isn’t shy about pushing the boundaries of accepted hockey “takes” (which are restrictive, unimaginative and oppressive), but I’m going to say it anyways: The Toronto Maple Leafs are the best team in the NHL.
You can accuse me of saying this for clicks. You can question my integrity, but you’d be foolish to do so. I relished in ripping the sad sack Leafs under Brian Burke and Dave Nonis. I never liked hiring Lou Lamoriello and I was against the Patrick Marleau signing from day one. I ripped the team for deploying Ron Hainsey and I constantly questioned them when I thought it was necessary.
I just honestly believe the Leafs are the best the NHL has to offer.
Like I previously mentioned, having John Tavares on your team without him being your best player is pure insanity. The Leafs are deep down the middle, they’ve got at least four elite forwards, and their bottom two lines look like they have more than enough NHL options to have an above-average bottom-six. (All stats for this article naturalstattrick.com).
They play a unique style that lets their best players be as creative as they want to be, and they have the best goal scorer in the NHL. Their blue-line has long been the object of scorn, but they now have three by-reputation defensemen who are no-doubt top-pairing players. If Morgan Rielly can get back to the level he was at two and three seasons ago, when he was a top five NHL defenseman, then they are going to have one of the better groups in the league.
Rounding out the top four is a player that played some of the toughest minutes in the NHL last year and put up a stats profile superior to star Cup winning defensemen Colton Parayko.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have four players for their bottom pairing (Dermott, Bogosian, Lehtonen and Sandin) two of whom (at least) project as top pairing players. They are the most talented team and they have the most potential.
Last year their team stats put them with Tampa and Vegas, ahead of Boston. They finished 8th under Keefe despite half of their games without Rielly and a quarter without both Rielly and Muzzin. They were denied a playoff run by one of the most unlikely things to ever happen in the NHL. If their back-up goalie contributed anything last year, and if their star goalie had even an average season, they’d have been a top team, possibly even winning the President’s Trophy.
I realize that teams have to win before they get widespread recognition and that’s fine. If I was interested in being popular, I’d just predict that the top six teams from last year would be the top six teams from this year. But I’m interested in the truth, as I see it.
And I see that the Toronto Maple Leafs are the NHL’s #1 Stanley Cup Contender. Time will prove me right.