Toronto Maple Leafs 2021 Defenseman, Goalie, Management Grades
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs had one of the best seasons in franchise history this year.
Unfortunately, all of that was instantly forgotten when the Toronto Maple Leafs choked on a 3-1 series lead to the Montreal Canadiens and ended up losing. To make matters worse, we had to watch as the Canadiens made it all the way to the Cup Finals.
Now in my humble opinion, there are two ways to look at this collapse:
You are very upset, hate the team and are using the loss to collect all your grievances into one nice and convenient package that includes complaints about the Leafs skill over grit approach, their salary cap strategy and their total disregard for the 200 Hockey Men Old Boys Club.
Or you realize that three of their five first-round losses were by a team chalked full of rookies, sophomores and third year players who were lucky just to make the playoffs in the first place. These were good seasons that were not marred by losing.
The last two seasons hurt, but realistically, one was a five game series after a six month layoff. Only the loss to Montreal really matters, and even that is excusable because even without John Tavares, all the Leafs really needed to advance was for Matthews and Marner to play even 50% below their normal production, something that will almost always happen.
I have witnessed the Leafs loss to Montreal turn reasonable adults into whining babies. It actually broke people. Myself, I will stick with the odds that a team stacked with elite talent that has 11 straight playoffs games w/ positive expected goals is on the verge of greatness
— Editor in Leaf (@EditorinLeaf) July 15, 2021
In my opinion, if you put the losses into their proper context, what you realize is that the Toronto Maple Leafs are a team that won their division, almost won the President’s Trophy, have three superstars about to embark on the primes of their careers, one of the best farm systems in the NHL and are the only team in the NHL without a bad contract on the books. (All stats for this article from naturalhattrick.com all mentions of overall rankings and percentiles from @Jfresh and all salary cap info from capfriendly.com).
So now that we are all feeling good about our favorite team, let’s check in on the grades for the past year. Note: This is for the regular season only.