The Toronto Maple Leafs lack of centre depth is not just concerning, it's downright criminal.
Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving is extremely lucky that Stolarz and Woll are playing so well because otherwise the focus would be squarely on his summer-time failures.
The Leafs re-signed Max Domi to a four year contract. They also gave Oliver Ekman Larsson a four year contract. Everyone knew these probably weren't wise deals even at the time they were signed, but I don't know if anyone expected them to have aged like a macaroni salad in the sun.
Treleving didn't get rid of David Kampf or Ryan Reaves, he didn't get the name-brand goalie he set his sights on, and he didn't re-sign Mitch Marner and allowed him to enter the season without a contract, which was a horrendous decision.
Had Anthony Stolarz not performed like Dominick Hasek, Leafs Nation would have turned on their GM like it was 2012 and Jake Gardiner just gave the puck away trying to skate it up the ice.
So far, the Leafs are managing with just 2 x above average NHL centres on their roster and a blue-line that features basically 3 x replacement players. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).
The reason? Obviously, it's the goalies.
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Mitch Marner, John Tavares, Jake McCabe and Chris Tanev are the only position players currently exceeding expectations, and the Leafs record is due to one thing and one thing only: the play of Anthony Stolrz and Joseph Woll.
As of this writing, the Leafs goalies rank 1st and 5th among all goalies in save percentage. They rank 2nd and 3rd in goals against average.
As a team, the Leafs are 2nd in the NHL in 5v5 save percentage, but they are only microscopically behind the Minnesota Wild and it might as well be considered a tie.
The Leafs are also 7th in high-danger save percentage, and 10th in PK save-percentage.
The problem with this - in so far as there is one - is sustainability. The Leafs 93%+save percentage is great, but they are one of six teams flirting with 93% right now, with each team playing about 30 games.
If you change the stats to also include last year, each team has played about 110 games. Now there is only one team with a 93% save percentage, and its the Jets, who have the unanimously considered best goalie in the world.
That means that 82% of the teams who were getting elite goaltending for 30 games eventually lose it as time goes on.
This shows us that as the sample size grows, anyone on a hot streak tends to fall away. The Bruins and Islanders are right there, just below 93% and both of those teams also have goalies considered the best in the world. We love Stolarz and Woll, but obviously any person reading this would swap them out for Jeremy Swayman or Ilya Sorokin if such a move was possible.
And, if we add in another full season's worth of sample size, and only the Jets and Bruins remain consistently above 93% for a long period of time. This is both good and bad news for the Leafs.
Good news because the Bruins did it with a similarly unknown tandem, so it proves that a team can sustain this level of play for a long time.
But also bad news because I'm pretty sure the Bruins are a massive outlier in the history of the NHL - they were quite literally one of the all-time best teams two years ago, and they seemed to do it with a pretty average roster.
I'm not sure anyone could replicate the Bruins success with two random goalies being ELITE for almost two and a half seasons. However, it appears to be almost completely random, so as unlikely as it seems, this probably can happen again, eventually. But, Swayman could also be the next Hellebuyck. At this point Stolarz has no chance of being that (too old) and Woll might be, but it's not likely.
The Jets have one of the best goalies to ever live, so the Leafs aren't going to match them on talent, at least, as I feel pretty comfortable saying that Anthony Stolarz, as good as he is, has nowhere near the talent of Connor Hellebuyck.
The Maple Leafs goaltending appears highly unlikely to stay at or near a 93% save rate. Their current expected goals percentage is 14th in the NHL, and unfortunately for them, Expected Goals are far more predictive of the future than save percentage, and the recent past says that as time goes on, most teams getting great goaltending eventually lose it.