Bet You Didn’t See This Coming Leafs Become Elite Defensive Team

The Toronto Maple Leafs built their team around four offensively elite forwards.

This was such an impact move, that it overshadowed everything that the Toronto Maple Leafs did for years. 

Despite, at various times, trading for Zach Hyman, Jake Muzzin, Nick Foligno, Ilya Lyubushkin, and Dryden Hunt, signing Zach Bogosian, Zach Aston Reese, Jordie Benn, and then building a bottom-six of eventless suffocating defense around David kampf and Pierre Engvall, Kyle Dubas just can’t shake the rep of being interested only in offense and skill.

Ironically, the Leafs highest concentration of skill vs grinding game during the Lamoriello/Babcock years when up-the-middle breakout homerun passes were a daily staple, and the team played a far more rush-centric, run-and-gun style.

But Kyle Dubas is again bad, slow, defense-only players like Polak and Chiarot, and he drafts for skill (since grinders are available for free and don’t need to be drafted) so everyone just assumes, wrongly, that he doesn’t try to build balanced teams.

So it’s probably a surprise to those people that the Leafs are now an elite defensive team. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).

Toronto Maple Leafs Became Elite Defensively While You Weren’t Looking

The Leafs allow the 8th least shot-attempts per minute in the league.  That’s pretty good.  They are really good at keeping teams out of the blue paint, and they keep a lot of their shots to the outside.

If you discount the shots the Leafs block, and only account attempts that make it through, they are 6th.  Carolina is first by a mile, but the second place allow 37.08 unblocked shot-attempts per  60 minutes at 5v5, and the Leafs allow 38.5.

The Leafs are also 6th in shots allowed, just one shot per 60 minutes, but allow just one more shot than the second place team roughly every four periods.

Goals-Against per 60 finds the Leafs in 3rd, though goalies are pretty random so we should care the least about this one as it has the lowest sample size.

For what its worth, the Leafs allow 1.99 goals per 60 while Boston, 1st place, 1.78, which is basically the same.

The Leafs are 5th in Expected Goals Against per 60.

They have dropped down to 7th in 5v5 save percentage, after a few bad games over the last few weeks.  That’s OK, however, because goalie performance cannot help but fluctuate.  With three quality NHL goalies on the roster (I’m counting Eric Kalgren) and an elite defensive team in front of them, the Leafs will be fine.

But I can’t help but thinking it’s hilarious – given what their critics say – that the Toronto Maple Leafs are now an elite defensive team, bested only by Carolina and Boston, and even then, only minutely.   People will still say the Leafs aren’t built for the playoffs, completely ignorant of the fact the Leafs are now a top defensive team.