The Toronto Maple Leafs are in the midst of one of the most bizarre occurrences in NHL history.
By all accounts, the Toronto Maple Leafs are one of, if not the very best, team in the NHL.
If they are not exactly on pace to break their team season records for regular season success, they are very close to it – and yet find themselves 12 points out of first place.
The Boston Bruins find themselves a full ten points ahead of the Carolina Hurricanes, who are the second most successful team in 2023 to date.
That is insane. (standings from nhl.com).
The NHL is a professional league, and a cap league, and together, those two facts should prevent any team from being so much better than the rest. While the Bruins’ success is surely an anomaly, it is nevertheless impressive.
Let’s take a look and see if the Leafs can possibly catch them.
Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins
Twelve points is a lot to make up in under 40% of the season that remains. The only reason to think the Leafs could possibly do it, is the assumption that Boston will eventually stumble.
But just because they don’t catch every break the rest of the way doesn’t mean they’ll suddenly also start playing poorly. Will they fall of their pace? Certainly. But be cautioned that a regression to the norm just puts them at the Leafs pace, and doesn’t necessarily make them catchable.
But, let’s say the Toronto Maple Leafs get extremely lucky and Boston becomes the worst team in the league the rest of the way. If they were to suddenly play at the Columbus Blue Jackets’ pace for the rest of the season (34 games) they would still finish with 110 points.
Let me rephrase that for emphasis: If the Bruins suddenly become the NHL’s worst team, they will still finish with 110 points. To get to 110, the Leafs have to win .656% of their points, which is slightly behind their current pace, but by no means are they assured to hit that number.
In fact, for an NHL team to win 65% of their points, they have to be both good and lucky. The Leafs already missing Matthews for a minimum of three weeks, so that is a big ask.
Still, in order to catch Boston, the Leafs would have to maintain their current pace while Boston becomes the worst team in hockey the rest of the way.
Here is where things get really crazy: Let’s assume that the Toronto Maple Leafs somehow start playing at the Bruins current all-time pace for the rest of the way.
That would mean they pick up 53 or 54 of the remaining 64 points they have available to them. That would give them a points percentage of .828 or .843. The Bruins are currently right in the middle of that range at .833.
If the Leafs add 53 points to their current total, they would have 121 points.
In order for the Bruins to not surpass that total, they would have to play .602 hockey the rest of the way and pick up just 41 points.
If my math is correct, the Leafs could catch Boston if they played to a record of 25-4-3 the rest of the way, while Boston went 15-14-5.
That means the Leafs become the current Bruins, while the Bruins play about as good as Detroit the rest of the way.
It doesn’t seem likely. But anything can happen. But the most likely thing that will happen is that Boston is uncatchable and the Toronto Maple Leafs open the playoffs vs Tampa.