The Toronto Maple Leafs are making the playoffs.
You could repeat the 2021-22 NHL season 10 000 times, and the Toronto Maple Leafs would make the playoffs ever single time.
Of course, you could likely have said the same thing about defeating the Montreal Canadiens last spring, but I digress.
The regulars season is 82 games long and it would take a full season of bad luck in order to miss the playoffs – but this team has a chip on their shoulder know and that isn’t going to happen.
Just because the Leafs went down in one of the most unlikely, flukiest, least deserving losses in playoff history doesn’t mean they aren’t still a top team. If anything, they will be better this year as Matthews and Marner should be in their absolute primes.
Toronto Maple Leafs and the Playoffs
The Leafs are playing in the Atlantic Division which isn’t as bad as it seems. One positive is that with Buffalo and Detroit in the mix, there are actually bad teams to beat up on. Lost in the narrative about how “easy” the Canadian Division supposedly was, was the fact that every other division had really bad teams.
Vancouver’s .446 winning percentage was the highest among last place teams in each of the four divisions. Each non-Canadian division had a minimum of two teams equal to, or worse than the Canucks. One division had three such teams.
Also the North had one less team than every other division, so that means every single non-Canadien team got at least eight easy games the Leafs didn’t get a chance to have.
Every other division had two teams worse than Ottawa as well. One division had three.
The point? The Atlantic division will give the Leafs two easy teams to beat up they didn’t have last year. In addition, they’re will be easy games against teams across the league.
As to the Atlantic itself, Boston is in decline, Florida has no goaltending, the Lightning lost a lot of players, and Montreal is a post-midnight Cinderella.
Other than Tampa, it isn’t even that hard of a division. The Toronto Maple Leafs are far more likely to win the Atlantic than miss the playoffs. At worst, they’ll be in second place.
In fact, most computer models will have the Leafs at the top of the league with Las Vegas, Colorado and Tampa, which is sensible, since those are the only teams as good as Toronto.
As to depth, I am pretty sick of hearing about depth. There isn’t a single team in the NHL with a proper replacement for any star player who gets injured, barring someone who picked in the top three either last year or this year. None of those teams are going to be competitive.
Let’s say the Leafs lost Tavares for the whole season. This would actually make them better because they could put JT on the LTIR then acquire $11 million dollars worth of players, wait until the playoffs, re-activate Tavares Tampa-Style, circumvent the salary cap and waltz to the Stanley Cup Finals.
There is no situation where the Leafs miss the playoffs. If they aren’t the best team in the NHL, it’s only because we aren’t allowed to say that until they win a playoff series. Their roster is ridiculous – four superstar fowards and 3 x #1 defenseman, plus a bunch of great bets on mid-range players who might explode given the chance to skate alongside Matthews or Tavares.
The Toronto Maple Leafs made the playoffs for five straight years, and you can count on it being six next spring.