The Toronto Maple Leafs (By Far) Best Option in Net for 2022-23

The Toronto Maple Leafs and Jack Campbell were a great story.

The Toronto Maple Leafs traded for the former first-round pick with the cheap contract, and he turned into the NHL’s best goalie from January 1st 2021 to December 31st 2021.

His run spanned one entire season, and part of another one.  During that calendar year, no goalie had a better goal differential, Goals Against Average and Save Percentage.

Unfortunately, he was absolutely terrible from December on, and was just OK in the playoffs.

I love the Jack Campbell story, and I am a huge fan of Jack Campbell the person, but he is the perfect allegory for NHL goalies:  Sometimes great, sometimes terrible, in no way predictable.

In the last three seasons,   49 goalies have played at least  3000 minutes, and Jack Campbell ranks 47th in high-danger save percentage.  That means he isn’t worth more than the league minimum plus a tiny “thanks for the good work” raise.   It also means he’ll be playing elsewhere next season.

Goalies are not predictable, but the thinking is that those who excel on a year-to-year basis will be those who do the best against difficult shots.  The number-one way we have for predicting goalie performance is high-danger save percentage.

Here are the rankings by HDS% for the last three years: Shesterkin, Sorokin, Kuemper, Binnington, Rask, Vasilevskiy.

In some order, that’s probably everyone’s list of the best goalies.  (All stats from naturalstattrick.com). 

The Toronto Maple Leafs and Jordan Binnington

I previously wrote a little fantasy about the Leafs getting Sorokin, but that is highly unlikely. My second choice then, would be everyone’s  favorite loose cannon Jordan Binnington.

Binnington split the Blues’ net more or less evenly with Ville Husso, who had a great year and better numbers.  But Binnington was still a top goalie with an .848 high-danger save percentage, which would rank him 3rd in the three year sample.

The Blues currently have JB locked up for another 4 years at a very reasonable $6 million.

Unfortunately, his antics, combined with his salary, the Blues Window, and their ability to likely sign Husso for less than $6 million will likely make Binnington available this summer.

The Blues currently have $9 million in cap space, and would be in pretty good shape if they want to return next season with the same roster.

But two star goalies is a pretty big luxury, and if they can trade from a position of strength to get themselves closer to Avalanche, they have to do it because pretty much all their best players are on expiring contracts next season.

So the Blues have one year in which they can go all-in, and they are already of the league’s best teams, so this trading Jordan Binnington might be their best move.

Enter the Toronto Maple Leafs, who clearly can’t try to pull of another reclamation project in net.  Sure, the math says “don’t spend big on goalies” but there are a few who you could make exceptions for, and one of them is Jordan Binnington.

He only makes $1 million more than the Leafs gave Freddy Andersen half a decade ago, and he’s way better than Andersen ever was or has been or will be.   Everything lines up for Binnington to be traded to the Leafs, and I think they’d be making a very big mistake to pass on a goalie like this.