The Toronto Maple Leafs have stumbled to a .500 record nearly six weeks into the NHL's new season.
The Toronto Maple Leafs entered the season as one of the only teams in the NHL that was pretty much guaranteed to make the playoffs. The Leafs have one of the highest floors in the league due to having three of the best forwards alive and more stars than almost any other team.
But the question about the Leafs is "will they reach their ceiling" because at this point, the floor is well established and people don't care about moral victories, good efforts or bad luck at this point.
They want results.
So will the Leafs deliver? There is no way to know for sure, but with some statistics and logic, we can at least get some idea. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).
Will the Toronto Maple Leafs get better or worse from here?
Anthony Stolarz is playing out of his mind and has a .928 over nine games, of which the Leafs have won five and gotten points in seven. Those are OK results, but not great. The Stolarz-only points-percentage would but them just tenth overall.
Inlclude all three goalies, and they have still done great. With a Vezina-level starting goalie, and the 7th best save-percentage in the NHL (both 5v5 and all situations), the Leafs are ranked just 13th overall.
Since this level of save-percentage is almost certain to go down over time, you want to win all the points you can while you're getting it. The fact that the Leafs are 7-7 (with 2 loser points) while getting this level of goaltending is not good.
The power-play has been terrible, and 3 goals on Monday doesn't change that. The PP likely works itself out - it won't be this bad for very long, and will likely even be a team strength by the end of the season.
Additionally, Auston Matthews isn't producing as much as he will eventually. But when the power-play gets on track and when Matthews starts producing more at 5v5, the Leafs will likely regress in their PK success rate, their goaltending and William Nylander probably won't keep scoring at his current rate.
The Leafs are 7th in 5v5 Expected Goals Percentage. Since they are 13th overall, they likely could expect at least slightly better results, but then again, their PDO (luck measurement) is sky-high and will likely drop down.
The Leafs are getting lucky, and they are playing well, and they are getting worse results than they deserve. But only slightly.
They are a team without any centre depth or elite defenseman. Without those things, they are always going to struggle to hit their ceiling for any length of time. That said, if Stolarz keeps it up for another month, they are highly likely to get more points than they did in the first month.
This is a weird team because you can find spots where they are under-performing and spots where they are over-performing. If I had to guess, I would say this is pretty typical of a team that has obvious weaknesses and flaws, but also had some of the best players alive.
The Leafs could get lucky at the right time and win the Stanley Cup with their current roster. But if you take all the pros and cons together, and if you add in all the things that you assume will regress and then all the things you assume will get better, you seem to get the same conclusion:
This team is probably just slightly below where it should be, all things considered. Their record is 7-7, but it could easily be a more impressive 10-4. At the same time, it wouldn't be totally crazy if they were 4-10. Exactly half of the Leafs games have been one-goal games, once you factor empty-netters, and those are 50% coin-flips.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are a team that is two games over .500 by virtue of losing twice in overtime. They are 13th, and in the middle-of-the-pack. Overall, they are probably worthy of being a top ten team, but they seem a long way behind Florida, New York and Dallas at the moment, and the path to that level doesn't seem possible with their current roster.
Without upgrading the roster, the Leafs would require Auston Matthews and Willy Nylander both scoring at over a 50 goal pace, while fixing the PP and getting Vezina Quality goaltending over 82 games, and all that seems very unlikely to happen all at once.
Overall conclusion / guess: the Leafs are 13th and should be about 9th. With luck, they could win it all, but without major reinforcements they won't ever be the favorite or the top team in the league.