The Toronto Maple Leafs Are on Fire (Kind of)

The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Philedelphia Flyers on Thursday night.

Despite blowing a two goal lead and generally playing like crap for most of the game, the Toronto Maple Leafs still somehow managed to win.

It was a game that exemplified their season - never quite getting going, but still surprisingly on track for great results.

To be honest, when I realized that they had won seven of their last ten games, I was quite surprised.

What's crazy, is if you go back through each game, the results seem way too good to be true.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Are on Fire (Kind of)

Winning seven out of ten is so good that if you did it constantly, it would make you the best team in the NHL in any given year. Right now their is one team in the NHL - Vancouver - who is winning more than 70% of their points to date.

Let's break down how the last ten games have gone for the Leafs:

4-3 win vs Calgary. This was the game the Leafs blew a two goal lead and got a miracle result from a goal challange. They should have lost their 5th in a row, but pulled out a rough victory.

They then lost to Vancouver in a terrible performance that had them as losers of five of six. Things were looking dicey, since everyone knew it easily could be six losses in a row.

Next up was a win over a short-handed Seatle team, and two wins over a short-handed Jets team (in which Winnipeg was the better team both games).

It's worth noting that the current 7 for 10 run the Maple Leafs are on started with a run of four wins in five games where only one of the wins (the Seattle won) was impressive for them as a team. Both Jets games and the Flames game should have been losses.

Moving into February they had a pretty lame loss against the Islanders. The Leafs deserved to win the Islanders game, but some rough goaltending and some ill-timed defensive coverage prevented it.

They then took on the Stars and won a game they deserved to lose.

After that was the Rielly suspension in a game against Ottawa were they started Martin Jones and got what they deserved for it. It was a frustrating typical loss, and then they won both their next games - a great effort with a delapidated roster vs St. Louis, and a bad effort on the back of an Auston Matthews hattrick.

Despite pulling off seven wins in this period, the Leafs were the better team at 5v5 in just five of the games, one of which was the Flames game they 100% did not deserve to win.

The Leafs are one of 10 teams with a .700 points percentage over the last ten games, and are ranked 15th in xGoals Percentage over this time. The results are here, but they won't last unless the team starts playing better. Team's like Vancouver don't seem to recognize when this happens, so let's hope the Leaf are smarter.