4 Areas the Toronto Maple Leafs Will Need to Improve
By Edward Eng
Surprising Areas the Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Make Improvements in
1. Giveaways
Despite being a team loaded with super talent both upfront and the back end, the Leafs often committed the deadly sin of giving away the puck too frequently throughout the 2022-23 season.
Last year, they ranked seventh in the league with a total of 806 giveaways, which comes out to almost 10 giveaways per game.
They were actually even worse the previous season in 2021-22, when they ranked fourth with a total of 910 giveaways.
It can be great to be able to outscore your mistakes, along with having superb goaltending to cover up for them as well. The main problem with this philosophy is that unless you have Andrei Vasilevskiy, you don’t really know what kind of goaltending you’re going to get year to year.
If they are constantly turning the puck over leading to odd man rushes and numerous scoring chances by the opposing team, it could potentially be a recipe for disaster in the long run.
As a result, the Leafs will definitely need to start cleaning up their act in this department by ensuring that they handle the puck less carelessly.
Otherwise, they will eventually find themselves fishing the puck out of their own net more often than not.