Weak Division Excuse Typical, But Toronto Maple Leafs Are For Real

The Toronto Maple Leafs are the best team in the NHL.

This is true because the standings say so. However, even though the NHL media was quick to anoint the Habs as a real contender after they beat up on the Canucks, the Toronto Maple Leafs just don’t get the same respect.

I get it: years of failure coupled with a GM who has flouted the supposed expertise of all of the league’s leading analysts has made them an easy target.  No one wants a 35 year old “kid” to tell them everything they’ve believed about the game for so long is wrong, and so they’ve spent the last several years focusing on unlucky results and not properly analyzing the Leafs.

The thing is, they likely are the best team in the NHL, and you can’t excuse it by saying the Canadian Division is weak.

Toronto Would be Leading the Atlantic Too

Yes, the Atlantic division, where Montreal is the fourth and not the second best team is harder.  But it’s the NHL – it’s not that much harder.  So sure, the Leafs might have a couple extra points, but it doesn’t really make a huge difference, and all you have to do is look at last year’s team to know this.

Last year, in a 47 game sample after Sheldon Keefe took over the team, the Toronto Maple Leafs finished 8th overall by points-percentage.  This despite playing at least half of those games without their best defenseman, and about half of the games Rielly missed also without Jake Muzzin.

Then they went out in the offseason and added T.J Brodie as an upgrade over Cody Ceci.  So logic would say that they are clearly way better than the 8th best team.

But there’s more.

They achieved that 8th place finished (under Keefe) while getting the 24th best goaltending in the NHL. If you can finish 8th under the circumstances mentioned above, and additionally do so while getting such  terrible goaltending (remember, until March the Leafs are using Hutchinson who, last year, was the single worst player in the NHL) is downright impressive.  (all stats naturalstattrick.com).

There is also the fact that the Leafs performed admirably in the playoffs and were completely goalied by the single most unlikely thing to happen in hockey recently: a team with John Tavares, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and Auston Matthews, a team completely built around offense, was held to a 1.9% shotting percentage over five games. 

You can’t oversell how fluky and unlikely this was.  It completely erased the fact that the Leafs two wins in that series were two of the most impressive wins in recent hockey history.  Their first win was one of the single most dominant performances in team history, while the second win saw them comeback to win in OT after three straight empty-net goals.

The Leafs win that series 999 times out of 1000, and the fact that they deserved to win wouldn’t have been glossed over so much if the media wasn’t so concerned about giving any credit to Kyle Dubas.This

So yeah, the Leafs are legit.  Their team stats last year, under Keefe, were better than Boston’s and just slightly worse than Tampa’s.  This year, they lead the NHL in points, they’ve got the most elite players in the league, and the league’s best depth.

The Toronto Maple Leafs aren’t just Stanley Cup Contenders, they should be Stanley Cup favorites.