The Toronto Maple Leafs are over-achieving and are not as good as their record indicates they are.
Some people have actually gotten angry at me for saying this, accusing me of being overtly negative about the Toronto Maple Leafs. I don't want to be negative, I want to write that they are the best team in the NHL and that they are extremely likely to end their 50+ year streak of not winning the Stanley Cup.
But I can't say that because the stats don't say that. I will tell you whatever the stats say - if they said the Leafs winning ways should continue unabated, I'd scream it from the rooftops.
But the thing about hockey is that the goalie is the most important player on the ice, but his performance is unrelated to anything else that happens, so it can't be predicted. You would think that great defense would lead to great goaltending, but that isn't the case.
Teams that are good at defense don't necessarily get the goaltending they deserve, and vice versa. This makes predicting the future in the NHL tricky because any goalie, at any time, can get hot and turn his team into a force of nature.
So let's just let the numbers tell the story and you can draw your own conclusions. (all stats from naturalstattrick.com).
These Numbers Tell You the Most Important Thing About the Maple Leafs
From the first day of the season, December 13th, Toronto Maple Leafs led the NHL in 5v5 Save Percentage, with a .938 save percentage. Joseph Woll and Anthony Stolarz were both among the NHL's leaders in pretty much all goalie categories at this point.
With this level of goaltending, the Leafs were 5th in the NHL with a .655 points-percentage.
In the ten games that they have played since then, they have a .900 5v5 Save-Percentage, which ranks 24th, not 1st.
Their record in these games is 6-4 and instead of being 5th in the NHL, they are 14th.
You might not think this is a big deal, because 6-4 seems like an OK record, but those six wins are not very impressive:
They beat Buffalo twice, the Islanders twice, and Detroit once. Their sixth win, against Dallas, was probably the worst game they played all year that they happened to win.
So in a ten game period where their goaltending regressed to a more normal and expected level, the same team that was supposedly playing amazing defensive hockey and finally had a "real coach" to show them the right way to play, took a complete dive into mediocrity.
Now this doesn't necessarily prove anything. But I think if you're honest about what it could mean, you wouldn't get upset with people for pointing it out.