Toronto Maple Leafs Must Start Stronger Than Last Year

The Toronto Maple Leafs, if they’re to have a successful season this year, need a better start than their last campaign.

While the team eventually went on to a franchise-record points total, the Toronto Maple Leafs struggled in October with a four-game losing streak.

A losing streak is a bad enough way to start the season, but worse still; one of those losses was a 7-1 shelling versus the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Maple Leafs may have rebounded from the rough start and ultimately rounded the month out with two wins (per Hockey Reference) that were the start of a five-game winning streak, but those points surrendered early prevented them from winning the division or President’s Trophy, and all but set up the match against Tampa.   A 3-4-2 opening month had consequences that lasted all season and the Leafs have to get off to a better start this year.

Toronto Maple Leafs Can’t Have Long Losing Streaks

When you look to the names between the pipes wearing those losses, it was a split between Jack Campbell and Michael Hutchinson. This year, neither will be back in the Toronto Maple Leafs net.

The damage wasn’t done despite running up considerable goals against and in fact, Campbell turned his form around into a truly impressive November, but that isn’t to say such losing streaks aren’t damaging to a player’s confidence.

This new goaltending tandem of Ilya Samsonov and Matt Murray won’t be wanting to start October with similar results. The team last year gave up 29 goals in 9 games, an average of 3.22 per game. The incumbent duo will be hoping to keep that number well below 3.

Nobody is expecting perfection in the first month of a new season; goal totals are generally up and players are generally showing a few signs of rink rust and they shake off the summer.

What the Toronto Maple Leafs will be looking for though is more wins than losses to open the year and certainly no blow-out results, because although they can become a rallying cry, they can just as easily negatively impact a team’s ability to perform.

The final standings last year saw the Leafs fall just seven points shy of the Florida Panthers and you’d have to think, given they lost to both the Ottawa Senators and San Jose Sharks in October, they could’ve gotten closer to a wild-card playoff opponent.

Absolutely, the Leafs need goaltending from day one but equally, they need Auston Matthews to find his scoring touch straight away and not in the Leafs’ 7th game of the year (his 4th); likewise Mitch Marner who managed just 3 points in the team’s 9 games last October.

There are always going to be naysayers and people deriding the Toronto Maple Leafs for their summer moves; in simple terms, the easiest way to silence those people is to go out there and pump out the wins from the get-go.

Hopefully, this year’s Toronto Maple Leafs can eliminate this patchy form at the start of the year and reap the rewards.