Toronto Maple Leafs Utterly Destroy the Los Angeles Kings
The Toronto Maple Leafs continue to make a mockery of the NHL Media’s ability to evaluate teams and hockey players.
The NHL’s obvious and no-longer-disputed BEST TEAM *(AKA the Toronto Maple Leafs) took a good LA team last night and made them look like a team that would struggle to beat the Arizona Coyotes AHL team.
Pure Domination.
The Leafs are the Wes Anderson of the NHL – not for everyone, but special to those who get it, ad after all these years, it’s pretty satisfying to see them get some mainstream recognition.
Toronto Maple Leafs vs LA Kings
This was not only the Leafs best game of the season, but I’m not sure if I have ever seen an NHL team dominate another NHL team to this degree for a full 60 minutes before.
The Leafs defense in this one was unbelievable. Full credit to Ilya Samsonov for his first ever shutout in a Leafs uniform, but I might have allowed the same amount of goals if I was in net.
The Leafs only allowed six dangerous chances all night, and for comparison’s sake, they had 17 themselves.
Those six dangerous scoring chances, as well as the majority of the Kings 21 shots all came after the Leafs had a commanding 3-0 leads. It’s hard to remember if LA even touched the puck at all before the Leafs scored three times in the second.
The only blemish on this game was the injury to Nick Robertson.
The Leafs dominated for the entire sixty minutes, and Mitch Marner continued his 21 games point streak. Marner, it’s worth noting, somehow ended up alone behind the King’s net, fell, then set up John Tavares for what would have been the best goal of the year so far.
Tavares didn’t score, so Marner just got the puck and scored himself.
Timothy Liljegren had himself a game. Playing just slightly less than the most on the team, the Leafs outshot LA 15-6 when he was on the ice, and outscored them 2-0.
He finished the game with an 83% X-Goals rating. (All stats from naturalstattrick.com and 5v5 unless otherwise noted).
The Leafs are now 10-0-3 since they last lost a regulation game. They have lost just once in regulation in the last 40 days.
They are 13-1-5 during this time.
They currently sit third in the NHL by both points and points-percentage.
Keep in mind that the Leafs should actually be better than their record says. They have six OT losses in 28 games. The NHL’s four other top teams combined for four OT losses in 104 games.
That is crazy.
Obviously the Leafs won’t get close to 94% 5v5 save percentage for the whole season, but they finished 4th overall last year with the 28th best goalies, so I’m not too worried about it.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are on a nice run, but no team is good enough to “deserve” to go 13 games without a loss. That doesn’t mean we aren’t having a ton of fun.
Next. Leafs Overlooked for WJC. dark
The regular season remains the best indicator of future playoff success (as opposed to past playoff success) and the Leafs are currently the NHL’s best team and Cup Favorites.