Toronto Maple Leafs Wouldn’t Have Been Able to Beat Colorado

Watching the Colorado Avalanche in the Stanley Cup Final, it’s fair to say they’d have beat up on the Toronto Maple Leafs just as bad.

Now with a two-nil lead in the series heading to Tampa, the Avalanche are looking near unstoppable and there’s no reason to think it would’ve been any different if it were the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Stanley Cup Final.

A 7-0 win over the reigning champions in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final is all but unheard of and speaks to just how tuned in this Avalanche team are; indeed, they are peaking right when they need to despite injuries.

Let’s also not forget that the Lightning goalie is Andrei Vasilevskiy, who is hardly a slouch. He’s one of very few goalies in the league that you could categorize as elite without it being hyperbole.

Toronto Maple Leafs Would’ve Stood Very Little Chance

First, let’s preface this by saying if the Toronto Maple Leafs had made the Stanley Cup Final, there’s every chance this opinion doesn’t stand up. After all, it means they’ve likely shown some killer instinct.

Not only that; to get past the Florida Panthers and New York Rangers, you’d have to strongly assume that the likes of John Tavares, Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews and Jack Campbell have found another gear, so bear that in mind.

Looking back to the 2 regular season meetings between these two teams, you’ve got an 8-3 Leafs win and a 5-4 overtime win to Colorado.

Those scorelines certainly point to what an offensive feast this match-up gifts us. However, during that 8-3 loss, the Avs goalie was Jonas Johansson, a goalie with 32 games NHL experience and a save percentage of 0.883%.

A lot can be said for the rest of the line-up as all of Colorado’s big names were out there. It’s not like they didn’t have Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Nazem Kadri and Mikko Rantanen on the ice.

The second much tighter match-up, it’s telling that they had their regular goalies back, though Darcy Kuemper found himself pulled after conceding three, replaced by Pavel Francouz.

Let’s just say that goaltending is perhaps the biggest weakness of this Avalanche group, yet they’ve shown that it doesn’t matter too much – after all scoring 7 goals generally wins you games.

Perhaps the big part of their game that would’ve undone the Toronto Maple Leafs is their squad depth; their bottom-six grouping just feels a little more impressive than some of the Leafs line combinations – Wayne Simmonds, Jason Spezza and Kyle Clifford.

The likes of Andrew Cogliano, Darren Helm and Arturri Lehkonen may ring too many alarm bells, but here are some guys that offer just that little bit more to their game than the Leafs trio mentioned (with the exception of Spezza).

Again, perhaps it’s telling that the Colorado Avalanche have immediately scouted how the Toronto Maple Leafs out-scored the Tampa Bay Lightning in that first round series.

It’s likely that tactical nous too that undoes the Leafs in a best-of-seven series. Whereas Toronto would be coming through three offensive juggernauts with a healthy dose of physicality, in facing the Predators, Blues and Oilers, the Avs have had to mix it up a little more.

The Predators are a much harder hitting opponent, whilst the Blues combine offense with that physical nature and the Oilers perhaps compare similarly to both the Avs and Leafs in that they tend to try to out-score teams.

It’s a comparatively more challenging route to the Final at least in terms of adapting the coaching and it might very well have been the final nail in the Leafs’ coffin if indeed they were up against the Avs in the Final.

Unfortunately of course, Leafs fans have been sitting on the side-lines since the demoralizing first round series loss to Tampa, while the Avalanche are two games shy of ruining a three-peat.