Toronto Maple Leafs: Easy to Love, Fun to Watch, Due to Win

The Toronto Maple Leafs are a .500 team after ten games, and that means that the sky is falling.

What most people probably don’t realize, is how razor thin the margin between a disappointing start, and a very good start are.  The Toronto Maple Leafs won about 70% of the points available to them last season, on their way to setting a franchise record.

70% of their points so far would 14 instead of 10.  Two wins, over ten games, is all that is needed to look good,  when your best players is shooting 2%, your best defenseman is getting a .650 save percentage, and David Kampf leads the team in goals. (All the stats naturalstattrick.com).

They don’t need a new coach. Like Milk, Barry(ie) Trotz would be a terrible choice.

Basically, if the Leafs had of won their 2 x overtime games (and we know, for a fact, that OT games are a coin-flip) we wouldn’t be talking about their start to the season, we’d be talking about how the regular season doesn’t matter.

It really doesn’t.  Anyone who tells you this is the MOST IMPORTANT GAME OF THE SEASON is a lunatic.  Halloween is over, the moon doesn’t have to control you. Relax.

The only people who really care about the Leafs record right now are the people cheering for them to fail so that they can get a new general manager.  But like their lame five year campaign to trade William Nylander, it ain’t happening.

My youtube cover album of Hootie and the Blowfish songs has a better chance of winning a Grammy!

This team is fine, they are fine, they were fine, and they’ll be fine in the future.  With a little love, and some tenderness, they will walk above the water and rise above this mess.  

Let’s take a look at the game:

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Philadelphia Flyers

The Flyers are one of, possibly even the very worst team(s) in the NHL.

They are 5-2-2, so no one really noticed, but they are the second worst expected-goals team in the NHL and are propped up by having a one of the highest PDOs (Combined sum of 5v5 save and shooting percentages.   Over time, they will all revert to 100, so over 100 is lucky, and under 100 is unlucky).

The Leafs are well overdue for some luck, so even if they don’t destroy this team, they should still win.

As with any sleeping giant, however, when they wake up, they are usually loud. Whether or not it’s tonight, next game or the game after that, the Leafs are going to wake up, just like they did last year, and go on a similar 15-0-2 run.

Everyone seems to agree that the stars will turn it around and most people are concerned with the lineups depth.

But the irony of this is that depth doesn’t matter.  The difference between Pierre Engvall, Zach Aston-Reese and whoever the best bottom six players on earth are, is scant. Microscopic.  Not even noticeable., and not consistent.

Depth is for show.  The deepest team in the NHL might get one, maximum two, extra victories because of that depth.  It’s counter-intuitive and most people will just plug their ears and pretend only stupid people would say this, but the NHL is a star driven league where depth doesn’t make even 1% of the difference it is assumed to make.   That is an incontrovertible fact, no different from stating that the shape of the earth is round.

The Leafs might even be the NHL’s deepest team.  Certainly they are one of them, but it doesn’t even matter.

Matthews, Marner, Tavares, Nylander and Rielly will decide if this team wins or not.  Jarnkrok, Aston-Reese, and whoever else will eventually get settled it, or they will be replaced.  The likes of Robertson, Liljegren and Sandin could take a star-turn and help the team win.

If not, there is now a lot of cap space, a ton of flexibility, and all they really need is patience.  I hope they beat the Flyers tonight, because the meltdown otherwise will not be fun.  Odds are they will, but even if the Toronto Maple Leafs were better and the Flyers were worse, there’d still be  a 30% chance of a Flyers victory, so we probably shouldn’t put too much on just this one game.

But of course, we definitely will anyways.

It’s fun to watch Mitch Marner, it’s fun to watch Auston Matthews.  We aren’t entitled to a winning team, we’re lucky just to have a team that might win.  They have done what they can, and the luck will go their way or it won’t.

It’s a well built team, probably the best in the league, and I’m sick of all the complaining.  Crack a few cold ones, stay off social media and have fun.

And if not? Let ‘er cry.  Let ‘er go.

Go Leafs!