Toronto Maple Leafs Announce Themselves As the Best Team in the NHL

The Toronto Maple Leafs faced the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday night under very unusual circumstances. 

In the last three seasons, the Toronto Maple Leafs have lost fluky playoff series after fluky playoff series and been labeled failures, while a team that really isn’t any better than they are went to three straight Cup Finals, winning two of them.

That team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, was the Leafs “reward” for finishing fourth overall last year.  Despite the stupidity of the NHL’s Playoff Seeding, the Leafs buckled down and were the better team, only to win three times and get screwed by the refs in game six, and then get goalied in game seven (despite playing one of their best games ever).

Earlier this year, the Leafs outplayed Tampa but lost in overtime, setting the stage for last night’s game. 

And what a game it was, as the Toronto Maple Leafs played nearly a perfect hockey game to defeat their rivals and announce to the rest of the league that they are the best team in existence right now.

Toronto Maple Leafs Announce Their Intentions In Style

Why yes, I am aware that there are teams ahead of the Leafs in the standings.   However, those teams have not had to deal with  being the team that has lost the most games to injury, and the most important players to injury.

Adjusted for context, a healthy Toronto Maple Leafs team would be comfortably in first place.

Unfortunately last night’s game saw Rasums Sandin exit with a neck injury, so it doesn’t look like the Leafs will be getting healthy any time soon.

Regardless, the game was something else.

Through the first two periods, the Leafs outshot Tampa 37-8 while out-chancing them 27-6.

Overall, the Leafs outshot them 40-19 while getting 18 dangerous scoring chances to Tampa’s 8. The Leafs finished with a 5v5 Expected Goals rating of 64% while winning 4-1 (the empty netters made the score seem like a better representation of the game, ironically).

This wasn’t just a good, hard-fought game.  This was the absolute curb-stomping of an NHL Dynasty that has gone to the Stanley Cup Finals three years in a row. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

If the score was 8-0 Leafs, it wouldn’t have done justice to the game they played.

Tampa was allowed nothing. The Leafs dictated play, controlled the game, did what they want.

If there was ever a game that was a “playoff measuring stick” this was it.

The baton has been passed.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have ascended to being the NHL best team and the team to beat.