Why the Toronto Marlies Will Win the Calder Cup This Season

The Toronto Maple Leafs AHL farm team, the Toronto Marlies, are off to a great start to their season. This is a group that has the chance to do something special and should capture the Calder Cup, the trophy awarded to the American Hockey League (AHL) playoff champions.

The Toronto Marlies are fighting to maintain their position near or at the top of the North Division in the AHL. While the season is still young, the group has set the tone for how the season should unfold. A great deal of the credit needs to go to management.

In 2021, the Maple Leafs hired Ryan Hardy and named him the general manager of the Marlies. He has been excellent in the role thus far. That shouldn’t be surprising since before coming into the Toronto Maple Leafs organization Hardy won a prestigious award in the United States Hockey League (USHL). Actually, he won it twice in three years. He was named the General Manager of the Year as the boss of the Chicago Steel.

Hardy has brought the same skill set that helped him guide the Chicago Steel to a Clark Cup Championship and back-to-back Anderson Cup Championships, the award that’s given to the team with the best regular season record in the USHL.

The Marlies must be ecstatic by the play of a number of their players. At the top of that list would be Kieffer Bellows, a low risk gamble they took when they offered the former 2016 first round draft pick a professional offer. He has fit in nicely. In his first seven games, he recorded five goals and six assists.

Bellows had played half the number of games of the Marlies second-leading scorer Nick Abruzzese. He has so far scored three goals and 11 assists in 19 contests. Abruzzese is currently playing the best hockey of his career. Hardy and the Marlies are hopeful that it will continue, but as well as those two left-wingers have been, they have a third at the position who has been even better.

The team’s point leader is also a left-winger who has been on a William Nylander type roll. That is Alex Steeves. The 24-year-old is climbing the AHL leaderboards. Before he was called up to play for the Maple Leafs, he was second in the league in both goals and points. (All statistics are from the AHL)

The Marlies also have a player who hasn’t yet returned to the form he was at a year ago. Deep into last season, Logan Shaw was fourth in the league in points. He has proven that he has the ability to create scoring opportunities for himself and his teammates. As good as the Marlies have been so far, if Shaw can elevate his game to where it was, this well balanced forward unit becomes even more dangerous.

The Toronto Marlies Goaltending

The biggest concern for the Marlies  chances at capturing the Calder Cup last season was their goaltending. That has changed this year. They have been relying on a trio of players to fill the duty. They are Martin Jones, Keith Petruzzelli, and rookie Dennis Hildeby.

Petruzzelli was lousy in last season’s playoffs. In his three games played, he allowed a total of 14 goals. It gave Petruzzelli a 5.31 goals-against average and a 0.829 save percentage. Hopefully, he is in the mix to help bear the brunt of the regular season load and keep his goaltending partners fresh for this playoffs.

If Martin Jones is still with the Marlies come playoffs (He is the most likely call-up to the Maple Leafs should there be an injury.), it should be his net to lose. No matter what the regular season numbers look like, Jones’ experience is what the Marlies need to rely upon. Last season, he played 48 games for the Seattle Kraken where he registered a 2.99 goals-against average and a save percentage of .887.

Interestingly, in this young season, the best stopper for the Marlies has been their rookie. The 2022 Toronto Maple Leafs fourth round pick (122th overall), has appeared in eight games for the Marlies. Hildeby won three of those games, lost three in regulation, and lost two in overtime.

The real story of his progress so far is that he’s kept his team in every game. Hildeby has a very impressive goal-against average of 1.53 and a save percentage of 0.935.

Expect Jones and Hildeby to be the Marlies’ goaltending tandem when the playoffs begin in the spring.

The Marlies are a team on a mission. They are as good as they seem and it doesn’t look like they’re going to slow down anytime soon. That’s why they should be this season’s Calder Cup champions.