This Christmas, Brad Treliving should probably thank Joseph Woll and Anthony Stolarz for still having a job.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are a middle of the pack team by any metric except goaltending and wins. Unofrtunatley, the history of teams whose goaltending hides their flaws is not pretty. Sometimes the goaltending lasts, but unless you're starting goalie is named Connor Hellebuyck, you just can't bank on it.
If the Leafs goaltending wasn't hiding all the GM's many, many mistakes, the Leafs would experiencing something akin to what the New York Rangers are currently going through.
But Saturday night's injury necessitated deployment of David Kampf on the Leafs second line was a stark reminder about how bad of a job Treliving has done overall.
Kampf on 2nd Line an Indictment of Brad Treliving's Job as Maple Leafs GM
The Leafs have the same record as the Stanley Cup Champion Florida Panthers after 34 games, and are tied atop the NHL's best division. Those are excellent results and we should be happy with them. However, the Leafs under Kyle Dubas have already proven to be the best regular season version of thist team in its 100 year history - this team and its fans only care about playoff results at this point.
So, given that, we can all agree that while the current record is nice, we only care about what the Leafs are going to look like in April, May and (hopefully) June. Assuming that is the case, it would make sense to look at the stats that best predict the future, and unfortunately for the Leafs, those stats are not save percentage or current wins.
The most predictivce stats for the future are Corsi and Expected Goals Percentage.(stats naturalstattrick.com).
Florida, Carolina, Edmonton, Dallas, New Jersey and Colorado make up six of the top eight Puck Possession teams in the NHL so far this year. The Leafs are 23rd.
When it comes to expected goals percentage, the Leafs are ranked 16th, below the Penguins, Islanders and Senators. Luck aside, the Leafs are playing in a way that should make them a borderline playoff team, according to these statistics, which, again, have been shown to be the most predictive statistics we have.
Worse though, is the Leafs supposedly great defense. It turns out there is barely any correlation between defense and save percentage, as the Leafs entered Saturday's game with the top 5v5 save percenatege in the NHL, but ranked only 17th in Expected Goals Against.
The Leafs supposedly tighted up their defense under Craig Berube, but they are only 7th in High Danger Scoring Chances allowed per game.
There is literally no statistical reason to think that the Leafs will stay among the top team in the NHL. When their goalies inevitably come back to earth, the Leafs can improve by getting more out of Auston Matthews, but likely also less out of Marner, Tavares and Nylander who are all playing great.
When we look at the Leafs blue-line, it's old and doesn't contribute enough offense. It is, at best, middle-of-the-pack. The special teams are not going to improve - the PK can't get better, so when the PP does, things will likely just even out. Covering all that brings us to our biggest problem and the Leafs Achille's Heel: Centre Ice Depth.
The fact is, winning so many games is hiding what an awful job Brad Treliving has done. The Leafs had to play David Kampf on the second line in their last game. They have no depth at centre ice. Domi is hot right now, but he's so bad defensively that using him as a centre screws up the entire lineup and limites the coaches options (as we saw constantly last year with Keefe).
Kampf is too exensive for a fourth line centre and keeping him on the roster means the fourth line will never score. The third line is a defensive joke that won't always score on most of it's shots. Pacioretty-Tavaers-Nylander is the one line that looks solid, but it means keeping Marner with Matthews, which is dumb on its own.
Knies isn't a top line winger. The Leafs don't stretch their lineup by deploying the franchise players across three lines, there is no scoring depth, the blue-ilne contributes nothing offensively, the team errored massively in sending Easton Cowan back to junior, and Marner has no contract.
Oh and they're capped out, have extremely limited trade assets, and their GM appears afraid to make trades. The fact is, Treliving has poorly spent the money he's had and hasn't been able to add to the roster effectively outside of free-agency (where he's been horrendous).
Other than Chis Tanev, whose contract is still a ridiculously high-risk play, Treliving has nothing to show for his two years on the job. Bertuzzi, Domi, Klingberg, Kampf, OEL, Reaves, Hakkanpaa....the old blue-line, not signing Marner...the list of Treliving Errors is almost endless.
The list of good things he's done is short: Signing Auston Matthews to a great contract. That's about it. You can put Tanev, the Nylander contract, and the Woll/Stolraz deals in the maybe column, as the jury is still out on if those moves will turn out to be good or bad.
Anthony Stolarz play so far has hidden this from the public at large, but with Stolarz now injured and the fragile Woll now alone in the crease, things are not looking good.
As long as they keep rocking a .925 or higher save percentage, no one will notice or care. But the clock is ticking on that already, and for a team that is approaching 60 years without a Championship.....well you just hope there are no Leafs fans who also cheer for the New York Jets.
Things are going OK for the Leafs, but having David Kampf forced into playing on the second line really exposes and emphasizes what a bad job Treliving has done with this roster.