Toronto Maple Leafs: Sheldon Keefe, Analytics, Mistakes and Excuses
By William Cann
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.