Toronto Maple Leafs: Media Hysteria Hides ‘Best Team’ Status
By James Tanner
Auston Matthews Will Eventually Contribute
For the first 414 games of his career, Auston Matthews scored on over 16% of his shots. (naturalstattrick.com).
This season, despite leading the NHL in 5v5 shots and being 3rd in shots overall (maybe not after last night’s slate of games, but after the last game he played) Matthews is shooting about 3%.
His Expected Goals rating is actually higher than last years, so lets consider that he has been powerfully unlucky to start the season, and that if he scores at even half his normal rate, the Leafs are likely 5-2, 6-1 or even 7-0.
This makes all criticism relating to the start of this season absolutely ridiculous. Note: Toronto and Colorado are both 4-3 while Tampa is 3-4. You know what Frankie says.
The funniest thing about the horrible analysis that Leafs fans have been mostly subjected to for the last three season is that it’s relentlessly negative, and anything that could paint the team in a positive light gets ignored.
Such as:
- Columbus had to set an NHL Record for save percentage in a series to beat them (98% 5v5).
- Montreal beat them when Tavares played for 2 minutes out of 7 games, and Matthews was unable to shoot the puck.
- Tampa beat them despite being outplayed. The Leafs fourth win was discounted by a blown call, and the best goalie in the world played maybe the best game of his career in game seven to beat them.
These kind of bad breaks should unite us behind the team, but the reach of the likes of Jeff O’Neil and Nick Kypreos is such that their (I have to believe intentionally) bad takes set the tone of how people view this team.