Toronto Maple Leafs

Bottom (Goal) Line

This season, as in previous seasons, the key to the Leafs fortunes is likely to be goaltending.  If you all recall, last year I wrote a couple of postings on how much the Leafs would be able to reduce their goals against as a result of the coaching of Ron Wilson and the goaltending of Vesa Toskala.

Unfortunately, reality took over, and rather than Toskala posting a better than .910 save percentage as I suggested he needed to, he posted a 0.891 SV%, which ranked him 42nd in the NHL amongst goalies with 20+ starts, ahead of only Chris Osgood, Johan Hedberg, and Manny Legace.  The Leafs GAA in Toskala’s games was 3.26, which actually ranked 43rd in the NHL.  The only goalies who saw more goals go past them per 60 minutes were Joey MacDonald (now a Leaf) and Hedberg.

Suffice it to say, the Leafs goaltending was not up to snuff last season.  Toskala went from what the media overstated as the most stable position player on the club, to one of it’s lesser lights.  Now to be fair to Toskala (and actually this won’t come across as a positive) those of us that actually tracked his performance in categories other than the win column two seasons ago raised the point that his play hadn’t been that stellar overall.

Frankly I think most Leaf fans have relegated their former expectations for Toskala to the pile of “nice if it happens, but it probably won’t.”  I’m not one of those fans, for a few reasons.  At the conclusion of last season the Leafs decided to shut Toskala down and bring in Martin Gerber who was plucked off of waivers from the rival Senators.  The company line leading up to the waiver pick up was that Toskala wasn’t training up to snuff as far as Brian Burke and Ron Wilson were concerned.  Soon after, Toskala came forward with the fact that he’d been playing through a groin injury for most of the season.

Last season I basically reached the conclusion that Toskala was not a full time starter in the NHL, based on his injury history, and sub par play while battling through injuries.  Now that the Leafs have Joey MacDonald, and Jonas Gustavsson fighting for the role of backup, it becomes a distinct possibility that the Leafs may play with a 3 goalie rotation at points this season.

I do still have high expectations of Toskala, and frankly think he will perform better given that his contract expires at the end of this season.  But with those expectations comes the caveat that I don’t expect Toskala to start more than 60 games.  I actually would think an ideal number for him would be around 45 to 50.  Let Gustavsson start 20 and let MacDonald start 15 or so… see who the “starter” and “backup” should be going forwards.

This season I expect Toskala to provide adequate, NHL average, netminding.  If he can’t attain that level of play then the Leafs need to cut bait and try to go in a different direction heading into next season.  When I say NHL average netminding, I mean a .911 SV% and a GAA around 2.60.  If the Leafs goaltenders can combine for a 2.77 GAA then they’ll end up with roughly 230 goals against.  That would be a reduction of 56 goals against from last year… and frankly that  will be difficult considering the Leafs will likely spend MORE time on the PK than last season.

The fact that last year the Leafs had a PK of 74.7% won’t go well if they end up in the box a lot.  Last year the Leafs were only short handed 308 times, which was 25th in the NHL.  If they play more like Brian Burke teams tend to, they’ll probably end up short handed around 360 times or so.  If their PK doesn’t improve, and they end up in the box  that much, instead of giving up 78 goals while short handed, they’d see 91 goals going in while short.  That would have increased their 286 goals against to 299 goals against.  Lets just say they’d better improve on the PK.

The rough midpoint of the league while short handed was between 60 and 70 goals against last season.  If the Leafs can keep their numbers in that range, and in the process improve BOTH their starting and back up goalkeeping, then their goals against should approach 230.  If they can score around 240 goals, that would put them on pace for slightly better than a .500 season.

Last season the five teams that won 41 and lost 41 games were Montreal, Buffalo, Florida, St. Louis, and Columbus.  I expect the Leafs to be in a dogfight for 8th place again this season with Buffalo and Montreal.  Here’s hoping their goalies and penalty killers are up to the task.