Toronto Maple Leafs: How the NHL’s Best Young Team Supposedly Failed

How the NHL’s Most Exciting Team Got a Bad Rep

First, the Toronto Maple Leafs decided to do things differently in a league that despises anything new or innovative.  The Leafs plan was to focus on skill, they’d revolutionize the way teams spent their salary cap money, and they’d eschew the brand of hockey that is the bread and butter of the majority of hockey fans over the age of 30.

In the strategy the Leafs employed – drafting smaller players, spending most of their money on stars, trading down in drafts, using analytics to make decisions, focusing on puck possession, not employing traditional “playoff types” – the Leafs questioned many fundamental assumptions about NHL hockey and how you should win at it. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with these ideas, but when you try something new and don’t succeed instantly, you’ve got to be prepared for backlash.

Tthe Leafs saw what bridge deals did to other teams cup windows and decided to pay everyone upfront before they “earned it.”  This went hand in hand with their plan to pay only for elite talent and take advantage of the fact that most mid-range NHL players were not any better than most of the players available every summer for near the league minimum.

Paying everyone before they “earned it” with playoff success turned off a lot of people, but would have been fine if not for the fact that this core group of players lost in five straight first round series. Now, context is everything….but sports narratives have no context.

The first three of the Leafs first-round failures occurred when the team was filled with rookies, sophomores and entry-level contracts.  They over-achieved early on and that made the subsequent failures look worse than they were.

People constantly look at only the point totals and tell me the Leafs have gotten worse over time. This isn’t true, because those point totals were highly inflated by career years by Freddie Andersen.  Either way, those first three playoff losses should have been seen as positives, considering the team just making the playoffs at that point in their development was good enough.

The series against Columbus sucked, but at the same time, the Blue Jackets set the NHL record for save percentage in a playoff series.  Two different goalies went on separate 50 save streaks in a five game series, while the team with the NHL’s best offense shot under 2% for the whole series at 5v5.

Also, it was a five game series after a six month layoff in the weirdest NHL season any of us will ever see.

This year, it was even worse when they lost to Montreal, but let’s talk about the amount of bad luck it took for that to happen.  First of all, in 17 games this year, Montreal beat the Leafs only four times in regulation.  In the playoffs, the Leafs had better goaltending, special  teams, 5v5 play, and also had the superior expected goals rating in every single game.

The Leafs became the first team to ever comeback from multiple two-goal deficits in the third period of the same series and lose both games in OT. In one of those games, during overtime, the Leafs outshot Montreal 12-1, and Montreal scored on a fluky knuckle puck from the blueline seconds after an uncalled headshot that should have resulted in a suspension.

Additionally, the Leafs played the entire series without John Tavares.  In sports there is a ridiculous narrative where “good teams overcome injuries” but that is clearly and objectively just not true, since studies show that the champion contender who is healthiest almost always wins in pro sports.

Fact is, a lot of people don’t understand how math works and actually think that it’s unlikely a team could get unlucky two years in a row.  It’s not.

The Culmination of Frustration Part 1

The crazy thing about how poorly the Toronto Maple Leafs and their GM are currently viewed across the league is how they’d be viewed if they beat Montreal.  Had that happened (and it was EXTREMELY probable) they would have coasted past the Jets and likely farther on the basis of Matthews and Marner’s corrections to the norm. (more on that in a second).

Even a loss to the Knights in the semis combined with how close the Leafs came to the President’s Trophy would have been a vindication of Kyle Dubas and his management style, and more specifically, his cap management.

The Leafs had a shot at the President’s Trophy heading in to the final weekend of the season.  Had they won their last two games, and had a combination of other teams lost , the Leafs would have finished first.

But check this: they still almost managed that despite 1) Auston Matthews going two weeks without being able to shoot 2) Freddie Andersen playing half the games and posting a sub-.900 save percentage and 3) their power-play going from the best in the league for the first half, to almost the worst in the league for the second half.

If Andersen and the PP are just average, the Leafs win the President’s Trophy in a walk. Sure everyone would then say it was because of a weak division, but realistically the NHL is so full of parity that what division you’re in makes only a slight difference.

The Combination of Factors

A 32 year old GM enters an old-boys club and decides to do things differently than anyone else ever has, in one of the most conservative sports there is.   Not only does he employ a different strategy in drafting, but he does it in personnel,  on-ice, and the salary cap.

Additionally, he replaces an absolute legend (forgetting for a second how bad that legend performed) while beating out Mark Hunter for the job (a fan-favorite due to his embracing of old-time hockey).

To top it off, he clashes with the already installed legendary coach and replaces him with his old friend, a rookie NHL coach with, let’s just say, not the best reputation as a player and person.

This “Boy Wonder” (whether fair or not) has a reputation of hating physical hockey and embracing statistical analysis, two very unpopular things with the vast majority of NHL fans.

He immediately signs his core players to massive contracts, and while the players do in fact live up to those deals, they don’t win anything in the playoffs.   (Note: this strategy should be vindicated by now due to the Leafs regular season performance, but in North American Sports we only count the random end-of-the-year tournament as meaningful, despite it being way less statistically meaningful).

Interlude to Say Something About the Leafs Star Players

If your star players play out-of-their minds and you lose, it is likely a problem of depth. If you can blame your depth, then dumping almost all your money into a tiny handful of stars is likely a bad move.

If your star players go weirdly cold (*or get kicked in the face and miss the series) and you still have to get unlucky in like five crazy ways to lose, this isn’t a problem of depth.  In fact, it shows how awesome your depth was that you nearly overcame a weird sabbatical of your stars.

But this is Toronto and if you were expecting logic then I feel sorry for you buddy.

Bottom line is this: in his first five years in the NHL, Nathan MacKinnon won zero playoff series and missed the playoffs three out of five times. Steven Stamkos also missed the playoffs in four of his first five years.

Matthews and Marner may not have won a series yet, but they also haven’t ever missed the playoffs.

The Culmination of Factors Part 2

Dubas is in charge, the Toronto Maple Leafs kicked a couple of legends to the curb to make it happen, he signs everyone to massive deals and focuses on things that old-time hockey fans and the guys who run the game don’t like or agree with.

Then the team loses to the Blue Jackets.

Then they lose to Montreal.

Matthews and Marner – two of the NHL’s five best players – go cold two playoffs in a row.

Their ex-GM wins his second straight GM of the Year Award (and no matter how dubious this award actually is, to the casual fan this looks terrible).

Then their most popular player, (inexplicably, it’s Zach Hyman) walks in free-agency.

Now add in 50 years of losing.

Then, no big names added in free-agency.

The net effect of all this is that the Leafs have three of the best players in the NHL signed through their primes and one of the best teams in hockey, and people act like they are garbage and always will be.  Auston Matthews is 23 and does that make Leafs fans excited?

I mean it should. But people should also be able to understand that if your best players are the reason you lost, and if they are 23 and their performance included great underlying numbers, then this bodes extremely well for the future.

The fact is that the Leafs are viewed poorly right now through a combination of bad luck, untimely injuries, untimely cold streaks, and mostly, a history of failure that has nothing to do with anyone currently running or on the team.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are one of the NHL’s four best teams (along with Tampa, Colorado and Vegas) and of those teams, they are the only one to not get significantly worse this off-season.

The Leafs are about to embark on the primes of three of the best players in franchise history. They have one of the NHL’s best roster, one of the NHL’s best farm systems and more stars than any other team.

They are on the verge of a Stanley Cup….just don’t tell anyone.