Toronto Maple Leafs: Sheldon Keefe, Analytics, Mistakes and Excuses
When are we going to call it like it is? The Toronto Maple Leafs are a mistake-driven team.
The Toronto Maple Leafs outplayed the Los Angeles Kings on Monday night by virtually every statistical measure that I can find, but it was the Kings that came away with a 5-1 victory.
The Leafs owned the majority of shots, scoring chances, high-danger chances, and had better puck possession (all stats via naturalstatrick.com). They won the special teams battle too, heck, they even outhit them 36-34, and yet they still lost. Jonathan Quick was noticeably good and Jack Campbell was noticeably average, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
If I look at the video of every Kings goal in that game, I find a glaring mistake on every one.
Liljegren challenged a faster skater way too far up ice and got burned on the Moore goal. Tavares, Bunting, and Marner all played soft on the puck at the red line, and the turnover leads to a rush goal against on the Athanasiou goal. Marner let his man walk right down main street unchecked to receive a pass in the slot on the first Danault goal. On his second goal, Danault is again wide open in the slot when Marner and Dermott don’t pick him up as he drifts into the middle of the ice.
Now, I’m not saying these guys can’t make mistakes, but this is sort of how the Leafs lose, isn’t it? The mistakes that the Kings made led to turnovers and chances, the mistakes that the Leafs made led to goals.
Should Campbell have stopped a couple of those attempts? Sure, but Campbell is not the problem. This is an example of what happens when this team doesn’t get excellent individual performances from it’s key players.
How Good Are the Toronto Maple Leafs?
The five game winning streak? The “Core Four” of Matthews, Tavares, Marner, and Nylander scored 13 straight goals at one point during that streak. Campbell was outstanding in four of those games. That’s the equation for this team:
Core 4 + Saves – Mistakes = Outcome
So how good are these Leafs? Well, they’re really good when they get individual performances that overcome their mistakes. They’re very mediocre when those individual performances aren’t there. Dubas has a cap situation that only allows for a handful of players capable of turning in those individual performances, and one of those individuals is a goalie who will be getting a big raise next summer.
Is my equation too simple to be used in analytics? Yes, of course it is. It also probably applies to every team in the league to a degree, I’m just arguing that it applies to an unsustainably high degree when it comes to the Leafs. It paints a picture of how this team wins or loses on most nights and it highlights the importance of the minus part.
Some of you will undoubtedly tell me that the Leafs deserved to win more games than they have, and it’s too early to be worried. Ok, so let’s discuss this “shots and chances thing” that I keep seeing during post-game analysis.
The idea that the Toronto Maple Leafs outplay their competition because they outshoot and out-chance them on a given night but they don’t win because of bad luck, is a take that I just don’t agree with.
The stats are right, but the perspective isn’t looking at the big picture. It doesn’t emphasize the importance of turnovers, giveaways, and blown assignments. Tilting the ice in terms of shots, chances, and possession, can all be for nothing if you can’t manage the puck properly in key moments.
This is often what plagues this Leafs team. They do a bunch of good things and then they do one bad thing, and that bad thing outweighs the good things on the score sheet.
When the Leafs have underlying numbers that say they should have won the game, people keep sweeping this mistake thing under the rug and calling it bad luck. It’s not luck and it’s not random. It’s just a game of mistakes and the Leafs tend to make more than their opposition on most nights.
The fact that they have the talent, and the goaltending, to overcome those mistakes does not erase the fact that this is a problem. My entire rant is basically an ode to 5 straight playoff failures, because when the second season starts, the importance of mistakes is magnified.
The End Goal: Playoffs
When the ice gets smaller and the pressure gets higher, this Toronto Maple Leafs team gets squeezed into submission by teams that compete hard and don’t make many mistakes.
This team is good enough to perform well in the regular season. It’s also, in my opinion, good enough to have a successful playoff run. The problem is that everything must be perfect for them to do so.
The core 4 MUST score. Campbell MUST make saves. Special teams MUST be good. The team MUST be healthy. Any of these falter and the Leafs are no longer a team good enough to have the success that they so desperately need to have.
Why all the “MUST”? Because they make too many mistakes to win otherwise.
82 games is a long, exhausting season, after which, you begin a second season that is even more exhausting. Success in hockey becomes a blend of talent, health, and attrition.
People tend to forget that when the playoffs start, there are no more bad teams left standing. The talent disparity that exists in the regular season goes away. Teams that make mistakes become teams that have a serious uphill battle if they want to win playoff games.
When you take away the talent advantage that the Leafs have, what are you left with? When I say take away the advantage, I’m referring to the fact that the Leafs have a significant edge in talent over most teams in the NHL during the regular season.
That advantage shrinks in the playoffs. It can no longer carry them to success. It requires other factors to become part of the equation to offset the difference.
Health. The team MUST be healthy. They just don’t have the depth to win otherwise because they make too many mistakes. They need all their talent to play to have a chance at overcoming mistakes.
Attrition. The mental toughness to push through adversity and grind out victories under difficult circumstances. Do the Leafs have this? If they do, they haven’t shown it yet. Maybe they develop this and maybe they don’t. What you can bet on, just like I stated with talent, is the fact that attrition won’t win them games either if they make too many mistakes.
No matter how talented they are, no matter how healthy they are, winning will eventually require a very simple change to the equation. They need to make less mistakes.
Which brings me to the coach, Sheldon Keefe. Is this on the coaching staff? Maybe it is. The fact that the Leafs start most of their games like the first 20 minutes is another problem, and the amount of mistakes this team makes may be symptoms of the same thing.
The focus just isn’t there. When it is, it’s not consistent, because they lose that focus at crucial points in the game, which results in costly mistakes.
The Excuses
If Tavares wasn’t hurt.
If Muzzin wasn’t hurt.
If Campbell made more saves.
If the shooting percentage would just regress to the mean.
If the referees would just call it by the book.
If they weren’t too old.
If they weren’t too young.
If the hockey gods would just listen…
What IF we just deleted all the statements that start with IF, and started to see this team for what they are?
The Toronto Maple Leafs are a team that needs to be perfect and is uncomfortable when that perfection is unattainable. Hockey, by definition, is an imperfect sport. That, is a conundrum.
Teams that win do so by navigating chaos and imperfection better than their opponent.
The Toronto Maple Leafs need to embrace the randomness and overcome it. This is their way out of the darkness caused by the excessive pressure of continued futility in an unforgiveable market.
Next. Top 10 Leafs Prospects. dark
Somebody just needs to burn the IFs with a torch and hope that the rest of them will follow the light.