Toronto Maple Leafs: Putting 4th Overall Into Context

The Toronto Maple Leafs have played 55 games of the 56 game regular season and they will finish it up tonight against the Winnipeg Jets.

The Leafs and Jets just narrowly avoided playing each other in the playoffs, but instead the Leafs will open next week against the Canadiens while the Jets will play the Oilers.

Tonight’s game should be some of the worst possible hockey you could see – since neither team will be interested in things that typically matter – things like winning and stopping the other team from scoring.

There could be potential for a high scoring affair, which would at least be entertaining, but at the same time, you might not see players like Auston Matthews or noted Leafs enemy Pierre Luc Dubois play all that many minutes.

Although, who knows?

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Winnipeg Jets

The Leafs can’t really sit players because of the cap machinations required to move guys off the taxi squad, and last game they still played their best players a lot more minutes than you’d expect.

I figured Pierre Engvall might play twenty minutes, but the bottom of the lineup wasn’t used significantly more than normal.

An interesting quote from Paul Maurice, and one that is surprisingly honest.  This is of course preferable to playing a non-playoff team with a guy like Brady Tkachuk who looked intent on injuring someone the other night.

A win tonight would put the Toronto Maple Leafs into fourth overall in the NHL standings, which is pretty impressive.  I think too much has been made of which divisions are the hardest.  The Leafs may have only one other Cup Contender in their division (Edmonton, who I said in my original preview of this season would only be a contender if they got a good goalie, which they found in Mike Smith’s renaissance) but I think the bottom of their division is much tougher than the other divisions.

Ottawa is probably the best of all the NHL’s bad teams, and while the top of the West is tough, the bottom is an absolute joke.  Same goes for the Central.  The East is just really average top to bottom. Overall, I’d say parity being what it is in the NHL, there is hardly any difference between divisions.

Fourth overall is pretty sweet, and when you factor in the bad luck on the power-play, the injury to Matthews (the Leafs lost half their regulation games during the portion of the season where he could not shoot the puck) and the fact they played 10 out of 56 games with their third and fourth string goalies, I think fourth is almost a crazy position to finish.

The Leafs had President’s Trophy aspirations into the final week of the season. It’s been a while ride and now just one boring game is left until the playoffs. Enjoy!