Toronto Maple Leafs

Analyze This

Ok, so I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to the mathematical projections thing.  Damien Cox has recently stated that it will be difficult for the Leafs to win 30 games.  Lets see if this makes sense using REASONABLE estimates of Leafs results this season, based on goal scoring, and goal allowance.

While it’s debated in many circles, I think the results of pythagorean estimated winning percentages using the single value of the difference between goals for and goals are reasonably robust.  The R-square value for the pythagen-port model described by Alan Ryder at HockeyAnalytics.com is 0.941, which is frankly quite decent.

Rather than boring people with an overly detailed dissection of how the model works, I’ll just throw some numbers at you to justify my rationale.

Let us - for the sake of argument - assume the Leafs will score at a rate similar to that of the New York Islanders last season.  The lowest scoring team in the NHL, the Isles scored a measly 189 goals last year, racking up 2.30 goals per game of offense.

Let us also - for the sake of argument - assume the Leafs have an identically atrocious defense and backup goaltender to those they iced this season past.  That means the Leafs would allow 256 goals against, or 3.12 goals against per game.

If the Leafs were to perform in such a fashion - likely one of, if not THE, worst offense in the NHL, paired with one of, if not THE, worst defense in the NHL - they should have a winning percentage somewhere around .341, which works out to a seaason with 28 wins.  Roughly where Damien Cox seems to think the Leafs will be floundering.

Put this in perspective people.  Cox is basically arguing the Leafs will not only be one of the worst offensive outfits in the NHL, but also remain one of its worst defensive outfits.  That is really the only forseeable way in which the Leafs will be likely to fall beneath the 30 win plateau.

Consider the following points:

1) The introduction of Ron Wilson as head coach, who has obviously improved the defensive play of every team he has coached, often making teams of grinders and sub-par talent into playoff contenders. Ron Wilson has never been the head coach of an NHL team that gave up 256 goals in a season.  Ever.  The worst he did was 251 in his first season with Anaheim, when they were an EXPANSION team.  Their leading scorer was Terry Yake with 52 points, and Bob Corkum led the Mighty Ducks with 23 goals.  Does anyone HONESTLY think the Leafs are THAT bad?  Their D was anchored by Randy Ladoceur, Bobby Dollas, and Bill Houlder, with a young Sean Hill working his way into the lineup.  Seriously… we’re supposed to compare Kaberle, Kubina, Van Ryn, Finger, Stralman, Colaiacovo, White, and Frogen to the expansion Ducks?  If Wilson can manage to squeeze better D out of that crappy Anaheim line up why should we expect differently with the Leafs?

Paul Maurice managed to do what Ron Wilson has NEVER done in his head coaching career… twice.  His Leafs teams let in 256 goals against last season, which was actually an IMPROVEMENT over the 269 the team allowed in his first season behind the bench.

Think about that for a second.  Ron Wilson has never coached a team remotely as bad defensively as the Leafs teams of the past few years.  If we use the worst defensive number from his career as an NHL head coach, and the number of goals scored by the WORST offensive team in the NHL last year, the Leafs would manage roughly 29 wins.

2) The replacement of Andrew Raycroft with Curtis Joseph. Andrew Raycroft was bad… really bad… like atrociously bad.  In 19 games, the “Razor” allowed 63 goals on 509 shots.  He sported a wicked 3.92 GAA and a pretty craptastic .876 save percentage.  Curtis Joseph might be old… but he isn’t close to that bad.  Even when he was at his worst with the Phoenix Coyotes two years ago, or his first year with the Oilers, or in his first season with the St. Louis Blues, back in 1989, when goals were scored a little more often, he was never THAT bad. In fact, in his worst statistical seasons in the NHL, Joseph has never had a GAA higher than 3.44, and never had a save percentage below .886.

Lets just for the sake of argument transplant Joseph’s crappiest numbers onto Raycroft’s playing time from last season… just to see how it affects things.  Raycroft played 916 minutes last season and faced 509 shots, so using Joseph’s GAA of 3.44 and SV% of .886, he would have let in somewhere between 52 and 58 goals… which is between 5 to 11 less than Raycroft allowed last season.

If you adjust the Leafs Goals Against to 248, instead of 256 (I reduced it by 8 which is halfway between 5 and 11), and still use the Isles low Goals For total of 189, the Leafs should en up with roughly 29 wins.

Even if the only defensive improvement the team makes is Joseph in exchange for Raycroft, they’re closer to 30 wins than most people would assume.

3)  Improvement on the Leafs Penalty Kill. The restructuring of the Leafs talent, away from defensively irresponsible and positionally poor players like Darcy Tucker, and Kyle Wellwood, towards defensively responsible and excellent penalty killers like Niklas Hagman, and Jamal Mayers.

This is the area that makes an obvious level of improvement.  Dallas and St. Louis had the 2nd and 7th best penalty killing in the NHL last season, while  San Jose had the best PK in the NHL.  Niklas Hagman had the 2nd most PK ice time of any of the Dallas Stars forwards after Stu Barnes, and Jamal Mayers had the 2nd most PK ice time of any of the St. Louis Blues forwards after Ryan Johnson.  Ron Wilson, Tim Hunter, and Rob Zettler were the architects of the best PK in the NHL last year.

If you also consider that Alex Steen, Nik Antropov, Alexei Ponikarovsky, Dominic Moore, and Matt Stajan at various points of their careers have demonstrated a high level of effectiveness in killing penalties, then one could easily come to the conclusion that the Leafs should improve quite drastically in this aspect of their game.

Penalty Killing was the Leafs achilles heel last year.  The Leafs had the 2nd worst PK rate in the NHL last season, at 78.1%.  This was compounded by the fact that they took an inordinately high number of penalties.  Thus, they actually allowed the most goals against in the NHL while shorthanded last season, 77.  By way of comparison, San Jose, who led the league in Penalty Killing at 85.8%, only allowed 44.  Dallas, who finished 2nd in PK percentage at 85.6% allowed only 51, and St. Louis who finished 7th at 84.4%, allowed 56.

If the Leafs can reduce their goals against while killing penalties to a more respectable, and attainable 60 - which would put them at roughly 13th or 14th in the NHL - their goals against total would drop from 256 to 239.  That’s a goals against per game of only 2.91, which would have put them 23rd in the NHL behind Buffalo and ahead of the Islanders last year.

With only the imrpoved PK, and the Leafs suddenly becoming the offensive equivalent of Ted Nolan’s Islanders team last season, they would fall in around 31 wins.

Ok so let me summarize a few things here.  The Leafs WILL be improved defensively… and not just in one aspect of their game.  Their overall team D should be improved positionally, their speed and consequently their forechecking should be improved, and they should take fewer penalties as a result of initiating more contact and pressuring the opposition.

In addition the Leafs goaltending (at least the backup) should improve noticeably.  Even if Vesa Toskala has an identical season to last year, the Leafs should allow fewer goals based purely on EVERY season of Curtis Joseph’s career.  Yes it’s possible his numbers will nosedive, but I personally think it’s unlikely given how well he was playing in the playoffs for Calgary last year.

Lastly their offense is unlikely to be so overwhelmingly bad as the Islanders was last season.  There has been one Ron Wilson coached team that scored less than 200 goals, and that was Anaheim during the 94-95 lockout shortened season.  That team actually projected to score 213 goals over an 82 game schedule.  His lowest scoring team was the 1998-99 Washington Capitals, who potted 200 goals.  Despite his reputation as a stifling, defensive minded, head coach, Wilson doesn’t really subscribe to the Jacques Lemaire, Ted Nolan school of suffocating D with zero offensive flair.  The top scorers on those Capitals and Mighty Ducks teams were as follows:

98-99 Caps

Peter Bondra 31 G, 24 A, 55 P in 66 GP

Adam Oates 12 G, 42 A, 54 P, in 59 GP

Joe Juneau 14 G, 27 A, 41 P, in 61 GP

Brian Bellows 17 G, 19 A, 36 P, in 76 GP

94-95 Mighty Ducks

Paul Kariya 18 G, 21 A, 39 P, in 47 GP

Shaun Van Allen 8 G, 21 A, 29 P, in 45 GP

Stephan Lebeau 8 G, 16 A, 24 P, in 38 GP

Todd Krygier 11 G, 11 A, 22 P, in 35 GP

Let’s just say that for the Leafs to have output like that, the scoring line for the top 4 Leaf scorers would likely end up looking like this

08-09 Leafs

Alex Steen 22 G, 41 A, 63 P, in 76 GP

Nik Antropov 20 G, 28 A, 48 P, in 70 GP

Jason Blake 22 G, 25 A, 47 P, in 75 GP

Alexei Ponikarovsky 21 G, 22 A, 43 P, in 72 GP

Actually… considering the Leafs still have Hagman, Kubina, Kaberle, Kulemin, and Bell… I seriously have a hard time thinking they’ll only score 200 goals.  They legitamately have a shot at six or seven 20 goal scorers… without Mats Sundin.  Even if only 3 players reach 20 goals, that’s more than the Caps or Ducks had in those poor seasons mentioned above.

It’s frankly painful to see how large the percieved impact of Mats Sundin’s departure is on the psyche of the Maple Leafs Media throng.

I sincerely doubt the Leafs will score fewer than 200 goals.  I sincerely doubt they will allow more than any Ron Wilson coached team has previously, so they’ll likely allow less than 251.  If I use those numbers as extremes just to obtain a ball park estimate, the team will likely obtain roughly 31 wins.

Since I personally feel there is enough defensive skill on the team to reduce the goals against to roughly 230, and enough offensive talent to produce around 220 goals, that should work out to roughly 39 wins.

Before people jump on me for arguing that the Leafs are capable of scoring 220 goals… here is a list of players on the team who have scored 20 goals in the past 5 years:

Nik Antropov, Alexei Ponikarovsky, Jason Blake, Niklas Hagman, Mark Bell.

They should be able to get 100 combined goals out of the above players.

Now factor in the following prospects:

Alex Steen, Matt Stajan, Nikolai Kulemin, Mikhail Grabovsky, Jiri Tlusty.

They should be able to get 60 to 80 goals out of the prospects.

Now factor in the following offensive D men:

Kaberle, Kubina, Colaiacovo, White, Stralman

The Leafs should be able to get 35 goals out of those 5 defenders.

That’s 195 goals at the LOW end… and we haven’t added in the likes of Dominic Moore, Boyd Devereaux, Jeremy Williams, Robbie Earl, Kris Newbury, Darryl Boyce, Ryan Hollweg, Bates Battaglia, Alex Foster, and whoever else the Leafs decide to call up.  If they can’t get 2 and a half goals out of each of those players (or whoemever else plays for the team), then obviously they won’t make it to 220 goals.

Personally I don’t think I’m OVER estimating everyone on the club… and I’m likely underestimating a few of them to boot, so it sort of cancels out either way.

Now… if the Leafs end up with 39 wins, and somewhere between 85 and 92 points, I’m pretty sure I’ve called things reasonably accurately.  Oh and guess what - that’ll put them in the same territory they’ve been in for the past few years - sniffing for a playoff spot.

Here’s hoping it all works out as planned… for my sake… and yours.