Toronto Maple Leafs

Goals For vs. Goals Against and Next Years Leafs

Ok, I’ve been punching numbers for most of the night in response to some comments left on my last posting. I ended up writing 3 long winded responses, and instead I’ve decided to summarize my findings in another blog posting. So here goes.

What’s going to happen to the Leafs offense minus Mats Sundin, and should the team improve will that tarnish Sundin’s Legacy?

I don’t think that it should. The guy is the top scorer in Leafs history. That alone should cement his legacy. He is one of the most consistent producers ever to play the game of Hockey. He has been one of the top players in the game for almost 15 years. He is considered one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) player to ever make it to the NHL as far as Swedes are concerned, and I don’t know why Torontonians should dispute that.

He’s an amazing talent, he just never had the right pieces of the puzzle to play with in Toronto. By that, I don’t mean he had the wrong “line mates”. I think the Leafs lacked a true 2nd line led by other high scorers ALSO in their prime, while he was in his prime. Yes there were other good players to play with Sundin, but very few would be able to argue that the Leafs had a really solid 2nd scoring line when they were near the top of the standings.

I think the best we managed was Yanic Perreault, Sergei Berezin, and whoever played on their other wing on any given night. That’s kind of sad.

As far as the Leafs scoring goals goes, you can’t assume there will be zero improvement from players like Stajan, Steen, Kulemin, Ponikarovsky, and Antropov as they are given more minutes and opportunity. Perhaps half of them step forwards. Even if the other half don’t, and remain at about the same level, or take minor steps back, it’s not like the world will cave in.

It’s very rare that a team drops it’s production by like 30-40 goals just because 1 player is taken out of the equation. In this case I seriously doubt that will be the result.

Philadelphia went from scoring 263 goals in 2005-06 to scoring 213 in 2006-07. Peter Forsberg didn’t disappear from the face of the earth, he just went from playing 60 games to playing 40 games; Jeff Carter and Mike Richards went from scoring a combined 34 goals to a combined 24 goals; Joni Pitkanen went from 13 goals to 4 goals; Knuble went from 34 goals to 24 goals; Gagne went from 47 goals to 41 goals. Basically they were the same team they just had a REALLY crappy year. It’s not that one player screwed it all up, they just collectively shat the bed.

I don’t honestly expect that to happen to the Leafs just because Sundin is gone. They aren’t complete idiots incapable of scoring a goal. Ten players on the team scored over 10 goals last year. Three of those players are now gone. Sundin, Tucker, Kilger had a combined 60 goals amongst the 3 of them. That being said, they’ve been replaced by Hagman, Kulemin, and Grabovski. If you assume Hagman will score 20, and Kulemin and Grabovski each get 10 apiece or so - which I think is a major underestimate but whatever - You’re only down 20 goals total. If you don’t think you can pick up 20 goals total from the improvements in the games of Tlusty, Steen, Stajan, Ponikarovsky, Antropov, Blake, and Moore… then the Leafs might be screwed. I personally think those players have 20 extra goals between them. That’s only an extra 3 goals apiece. I think Steen and Stajan should be able to hit 20 goals. I think Ponikarovsky should be able to hit 25. I think Blake should be able to hit 25. I think Moore should be able to hit 10.

Now you KNOW they aren’t all going to work out that way, but I think when all is said and done, we can expect the Leafs to score at least 220 goals. Remember that Wilson’s teams typically have top 10 power play ranking, functioning around 18% usually. That might tail off to about 17% or so depending on the talent the Leafs have on the ice, but that would still have them in the top half of the league. We can assume they’ll get around 30 power play goals during the regular season as a team, which is exactly how many they had last season.

The Leafs scored 228 goals in total last year, but 220 is way ahead of the Islanders 194 last season, and the Rangers, and the Devils, and the Blue Jackets, and the Blues, and the Bruins, and the Canucks, and the Ducks, and Florida, Atlanta, and Phoenix. It’s just behind San Jose and Tampa Bay’s totals from last year of 222, and 223 respectively. It would have put the Leafs 19th in league scoring, which is not amazing, but it’s pretty far from the worst in the NHL.

How will Ron Wilson affect the Leafs goals against?

On a superficial level, we can figure a bit of this out based on how Wilson’s teams have performed typically in the past. The Sharks had the best PK in the league last year at 85.8% during the regular season. Wilson’s teams are often some of the best penalty killers in the NHL.

Assuming Wilson can improve on the Leafs standing in that category as 29th in the NHL at 78.1%, I think inroads in goals against can be made. If he improves it to just the league average, of roughly 82% or 83%, the goals given up by the Leafs on the PK would have gone from 77 to 62 or so.

That’s a reduction of 15 goals against, which would bring their total down from 256 to 241. That would have improved them from 27th to 24th in the NHL last season.

Also of relevance is the fact that Ron Wilson tends to have disciplined teams that are rarely Short Handed in comparison to the rest of the league. Last season the Sharks had the 3rd fewest short handed situations in the league at 310. In 2006-07 his team was again 3rd best in avoiding short handed situations at 330. In 2005-06 his team was AGAIN 3rd best in the NHL in avoiding short handed situations at 399. In 2003-04 his team was 7th best in the NHL with 319 short handed situations. In his first year in San Jose in 2002-03 the team was middle of the pack with 358 short handed situations.

If we assume there will be a period of adjustment for Wilson and the Leafs, we could guess that he will have the Leafs somewhere between where they finished in the middle of the league in short handed situations last year, and the top 3 or 4 teams as he is used to. That means, based on last years penalty stats from the NHL, the Leafs should end up with around 330 short handed situations. With an 82% PK and 330 short handed situations, that puts the Leafs at 60 goals against while short handed. Which improves their standing by 2 more goals against.

A 17 goal reduction in total goals against would put them in 23rd in the NHL.

That’s WITHOUT the adjustments I should be making for the crappy play of Andrew Raycroft, but I’ll get to that.

How much of a change will we see as a result of Joseph replacing Raycroft as the backup net minder?

If we take Raycroft’s atrocious record of 63 goals against on 509 shots, and exchange it for the play of CuJo, we again see a drop in goals against.

If we assume - just for the sake of argument that Joseph will have numbers that match his WORST statistical season thus far in the NHL (his first season in Edmonton), we can pretend he’ll end up with an .886 save percentage. That means he would have given up 58 goals on those 509 shots. Frankly I doubt he’ll be that bad, and a more realistic estimate, based on his play last season, and his comfort in Toronto, would be a number slightly below his career save percentage of .907. Let’s go with .900, just for the sake of being reasonable. With a .900 save percentage, he would have let in 51 goals. That’s a reduction of another 12 goals against for the Leafs off of last season’s numbers.

If you take away 17 goals due to improved penalty killing, or take off 12 due to improved back up netminding… well you get the picture. The Leafs should be able to shave off around 20 goals or so in a fairly predictable fashion. Obviously Raycroft was part of the reason for the number of Power Play goals scored against the Leafs, as 19 of the 63 goals he gave up came on the PK. That’s 30% of his goals against, and a quarter of the goals the Leafs gave up on the PK. 55 of Toskala’s 165 goals against were PP markers, which again represents a 3rd of his total. If we allocate 1/4 of the 17 goals prevented to an improvement for Raycroft, that means he’d have let in 15 goals on the PK rather than 19. Toskala would have let in 42 goals on the PK rather than 55. Even if Raycroft let in 4 fewer on the PK, that still means he gave up 59 goals. So Joseph would have presented another 8 goal improvement in Goals Against, just based on SV% numbers.

So assuming Toskala’s goals against drops by 13, and Joseph gives up around 51 goals total… that puts the Leafs at about 231 goals against. That would have ranked them around Chicago and Washington in 19th or 20th in the NHL. Not outstanding, but not a bottom feeder either.

Where does that leave the Leafs overall in the standings?

If they can score 220 and let in 230, that should put them on pace for a roughly .476 win percentage (using a modified pythagorean model *pythagenpuck). Their win percentage last season was .439 with 36 wins. Last season, Buffalo and Vancouver won 39 games (.476 win percentage) and ended up with 90 and 88 points respectively, 3 or 4 points out of a playoff spot, and 18th or 19th overall in the NHL. If the Leafs end up around there this coming season I wouldn’t be surprised.

Look forward to a 1st round draft pick somewhere between 10th and 15th next season Leaf fans!

If Howard Berger and Damien Cox annoy you by blasting the Leafs for repeating the same mistakes as always when they end up just missing the playoffs YET AGAIN, you should feel free to refer back to this article and make note of whether the Leafs maintained their goal production and improved their goals against. It might not look like progress, but it is. The key things to keep an eye on this season will be goal production for the entire team (particularly the younger players, and yes 2 or 3 more goals is still an improvement), and penalty killing. If the team can improve it’s penalty killing and get better backup goal tending they should be well on their way to moving forwards.