The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Edmonton Oilers Saturday night in overtime for their second straight come-from-behind win.
The win gives the Toronto Maple Leafs five wins in their last six games, all without Auston Matthews, whose injury is mysterious and a growing concern.
The wins are impressive, there is no doubt about it. However, at the risk of sounding negative, the Leafs are getting better results than they probably deserve. I'm not trying to complain, I just want to point out that they aren't going to continue doing this if they don't adress some of their most obvious problems.
For instance, in the five games before the Washington game, the Leafs scored just once at 5v5. That is really, really bad. The fact that they won three of those games is pretty crazy.
Going 5-2 during a stretch where three of the wins were in games they didn't score at 5v5 (except once) and two of the other wins were come-from-behind is pretty lucky. Consider also that three of the five wins were overtime wins and that should make it pretty clear the team is getting lucky.
Good teams get lucky - but mediocre teams also get lucky and then think they're better than they are and then don't make the moves they should. The Leafs need to be careful here.
Toronto Maple Leafs New, Rumours, Monday Morning Musings etc.
- The Leafs need to cut Ryan Reaves. That hit was brutal, but the five minute penalty alone negated anything positive he'll do for the next ten games he dresses in.
- The Leafs need to stop dressing 2 x fourth lines in every game. Lorentz, Dewar, Kampf, Reaves and Holmberg are all fourth liners (at best) and Craig Berube needs to stop dressing five of them in a game.
- There are rumours about David Jiricek and Simon Nemac, but nothing firmly linking the Leafs to either player. The Leafs are heavily rumoured to be looking to make a move however, because their roster is overloaded and when fully healthy, they are way over the salary cap.
- When Matthews comes back - I'm guessing Sunday at Utah - the Leafs need to make sure that him and Marner are always on different lines. I've tried to make it clear for as long as I can remember that teams should never play Franchise Players on the same line regularly, but the Leafs just don't listen!
- Only one game this week, and that's Wednesday against Vegas.