The Toronto Maple Leafs will play their first game of the new NHL season in under a month.
The Toronto Maple Leafs will open training camp sometime after Christmas, and will hopefully be ready to crush the competition early in the new year.
Due to a favorable realignment situation, the Leafs should have a much higher chance of winning their division than they otherwise would have. Instead of spending their time in a dogfight with Tampa and Boston for Atlantic Division supremacy, they will be hanging out in the Canadian division, which is much, much weaker.
Incredibly, the entire 56 game season will see the Leafs playing only six other teams.
Toronto Maple Leafs and the Canadian Division
Since there are only six other teams for the Leafs to play, and the season is 56 games long, that means the Leafs will meet up with each of the other Canadian teams eight time each.
Yup, as I wrote last month, this was the only real avenue for the NHL considering the border issue.
— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) December 19, 2020
If Canada's 7 teams get to play in Canada, this is how it's going to go. So Canadian teams play each other until the league semifinals in June. https://t.co/rZc5MljyD6
While some have suggested it will be boring to repeatedly watch the same teams, I personally could not care less – we’ve been so starved for hockey that I wouldn’t care if each team exclusively played only one other team.
I think that while there’s some obviously draw backs to the format – competitive imbalance, the game’s most marketable stars stuck in Canada, the repetitive nature of such a format – that the pros far outweigh the cons.
To say nothing of the medical benefits, the All Canadian Division is just cool – most of the team’s are fun to watch, the rivalries will be interesting, and the games likely will be more intense than usual. The shorter schedule adds more weight to each game, and this will make it really fun to watch.
Add in the fact that we’re getting something that we’ve been missing for so long, and I think the NHL is set up to have a great season, medical news permitting.
The most exciting thing though is how all of the NHL’s best teams, except the Leafs, are in other divisions. The Senators are going to be terrible, everyone knows that. The Jets had a Hart Trophy Goalie last year and still barely did anything. Their team is not good.
The Oilers are a two-player team, the Flames and Canucks both with nice pieces but little to no direction. Then there are the Habs – a team that thought trading Max Domi for Josh Anderson was smart.
To me, it appears that the pieces are aligning to give the Toronto Maple Leafs their best season is decades.