The Toronto Maple Leafs are off to an excellent 11-3-1 start to the new NHL season.
The Toronto Maple Leafs find themselves in first place in the entire league with a weeks worth of games against the Ottawa Senators on the horizon.
Currently, the Leafs are 16 points up on the Senators, despite the fact that one of their three victories on the year came against the Leafs. This has been a fun start to the season, but the question on every Leafs fans mind is “Is this for real?”
Well…..I want to be. Especially after being the guy who wrote for an entire offseason that the Leafs got terribly unlucky against the Blue Jackets and deserved to be judged on their advanced stats and not their goalie induced failures.
Are the Toronto Maple Leafs For Real or Not?
The thing is, the stats now say the Leafs are getting insanely lucky. Their record in one-goal games is preposterous and their team stats are terrible. Look, I enjoy winning and I hope it continues. But, certain things need to be looked at.
For instance, the Leafs are 16th in the NHL in Corsi-For and their overall percentage of shot-attempts is below 50%. They are 21st in shots-for percentage, 11th in scoring chance-for percentage, 17th in high-danger chances-for percentage, and are 50% in expected goals, ranking18th. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).
So the question is, how does a team that is statistically performing so terribly have such a great record?
The Leafs are 4th in the NHL in percentage of total goals scored, at 60%, but it is statistically unlikely that they can continue to score at such a clip while allowing other teams to get more shot-attempts, shots and scoring chances than they get themselves.
The Leafs are 4th in shooting percentage, and 5th in save percentage, which explains their success. These kinds of numbers indicate a team getting lucky, and a team unlikely to maintain it’s record. Then again, Tampa is nearly always putting up a higher PDO than should be sustainable, but they manage.
Maybe the Leafs can too.
Some Ideas on Why the Leafs Stats Are So Bad
Perhaps one reason for the Leafs numbers defying record is that they have more shooting talent than other teams, so they will, over time, shoot at a higher shooting percentage than average.
Secondly, It is possible that the Toronto Maple Leafs high-possession game style that involves a lot of hanging onto the puck and passing the puck, and skating back and regrouping with the puck doesn’t get recognized by these statistics.
What I mean is that while teams playing a more traditional style would throw the puck on net, the Leafs hang on to it. This may lead to fewer shot-attempts and scoring chances, but more dangerous ones. This doesn’t show up in the high-danger scoring chance stats, but theoretically, those could be divided into levels of danger, and perhaps the Leafs are getting more Grade A chances. Hard to say without more data.
Finally, the Leafs are playing fewer teams in fewer arenas. Therefore if the scorer in one arena is particularly bad it would affect the data more this year than in other years where there’d be a lot more variation and it would matter less. Then again, for all I know the same arena changes scorers all the time. There are other things too: when you play with the lead in the NHL, the other team tends to dominate play, this is knows as “score effects,” and could be a factor.
There is also injuries, Tavares inability to create offense 5v5, and what seems like a more conservative 5v5 approach meant to improve defense and rely on the power-play. Perhaps it is the lack of training camp, or the weird schedule. There are many plausible explanations, but the real answer is that I have no idea.
Unless their is a reason for the Leafs terrible team stats then we should expect them to crash back to earth and become an average, not great team.
It’s important to note that I’m just hypothesizing here. The Toronto Maple Leafs may in fact be a terrible team just getting lucky. But there have several games where, to my eye, it looks like the Leafs have the puck constantly, then I look at the stats and they say the other team was favored to win.
As a side note, the Leafs are 5th in the NHL in both points percentage and points, as well as 4th in wins and 3rd in regulation wins since Sheldon Keefe took over last season, a sample of 62 games, many of which featured the Leafs down their two top defenseman.
A win is a win, and the only reason we care if they’re lucky or not is because we just want to be able to reasonably expect whether they’ll continue to win or tail off. I am hoping the Leafs are for real, and based on their roster and their record I think they are. The team stats are concerning.