Toronto Maple Leafs: Once Again It’s Fun With the NHL Standings

The Toronto Maple Leafs aren’t the only victims of the NHL’s silly and ill-advised divisional rivalry approach to the NHL Playoffs.

I was watching a Don Cherry Rock Em Sock Em video from after the Penguins and Sharks met in the Stanley Cup Final (the year the Toronto Maple Leafs finished last, and Connor McDavid’s Rookie Season) and I saw something interesting:

The 3rd (St Louis) and 5th (Chicago) best teams in the NHL had to play in the opening round of the playoffs.

Its kind of embarrassing that the NHL didn’t fix their format after realizing this could happen, and now it’s basically happening annually, as Tampa, Boston and Toronto are 3 of the NHL’s best teams.

Barring a historic collapse, the Lightning will meet the Leafs in the first round, as everyone has known for months.

Toronto Maple Leafs and Fun With the NHL Standings

The Bruins remain in first, but they are extremely overrated. Their 138 PDO is 16 points higher than anyone else’s, as their goalies have combined to save almost 94% of the shots they have faced at 5v5.

This is completely unsustainable and good news for whoever has to play Boston in the playoffs.

The Toronto Maple Leafs, on the other hand, are 9th in shooting percentage and 8th in save percentage, while being in the top ten in both puts them 5th in PDO overall.   They are fourth overall by points percentage, and thus they are outperforming their PDO, which is an indicator of a great team.

Carolina and New Jersey are also outperforming their luck, and the difference between Boston and the next three best teams is basically nothing.

This isn’t to say Boston is ALL luck – they are clearly a top team, as shown by the fact that they lead the NHL in high-danger save percentage by a significant margin.  The Leafs are second in this category, which is probably the most important of the goalie stats.

Boston is great, they just aren’t better than Toronto by 20 points.  (stats naturalstattrick.com).

By Expected Goals, the best team is Carolina, not Boston. The Leafs rank fourth after Carolina, New Jersey and the NHL’s most unlucky team: the Calgary Flames.

They are likely the best team in the West, and will likely miss the playoffs due to just getting abjectly crap results all year, despite not deserving them in any way.  The same thing happened last year to Vegas, who are once again a top 5 team this year.

Ottawa needs about 11 points to catch Tampa, and with only 20 games left it’s unlikely. The Sens have been surprisingly great since New Years, while Tampa has been horrible of late.

It looks like Ottawa can get a wild card at the expense of the Islanders, and Buffalo has a shot too. Detroit and Florida look done.

In the West, either the Oilers or Jets could choke and let Nashville back into it – they have a whole bunch of games in hand.  And while Calgary seems done, they’re a way better team that they seem right now and a well timed hot streak could possibly get them back in it.

To close, it’s worth pointing out that the that the Toronto Maple Leafs are 19 points back and Boston has a game in hand.  I don’t know why it’s worth pointing that out….for comedy reasons I guess? It’s just so ridiculous.