Toronto Maple Leafs

Halfway There

No the season is not half over.  The Leafs are halfway to playing a decent game of NHL caliber hockey.  Unfortunately there are still major lapses in their game which will need to be addressed before anyone considers them worthy of significant praise.

Coming off of their 5 game road trip through Vancouver, Anaheim, Dallas, Buffalo, and Montreal, they certainly have more reason for a positive outlook then they did on their departure.  They gained 5 points of a possible 10, making it a .500 road trip from a points percentage perspective.  They outplayed 4 of the 5 teams despite only gaining one victory.  They forced OT in the last two games of the trip after being pushed into it in Dallas.  They have now faced down three of the best goalies (Luongo, Hiller, and Miller) in the NHL and came away with their heads held high. 

In terms of individual performances Tomas Kaberle produced 13 points in 5 games giving him 17 on the season, and now leads the NHL in assists with 15, and is 6th in overall points.  Mikhail Grabovski is now 2nd on the team in points with 10 after his 3 assist night in Montreal, and is actually winning some faceoffs, going 47 for 80 over the course of the trip for a 58.8% win rate.  Niklas Hagman recorded his second career hat trick, while Alexei Ponikarovsky had a 2 goal game against Montreal so those two now lead the team with 6 and 5 goals respectively. Lee Stempniak has awoken from his non-point producing slumber, and ninjaed his way to 3 goals and 3 assists in his last 4 games. Nikolai Kulemin is beginning to prove he deserves regular minutes in the NHL and scored his first few goals of the season; Jiri Tlusty finally got into his first NHL game of the season; meanwhile Luke Schenn seems to be relaxing a bit on the blue line in his second year.  If there’s anything to take hope from in Tlusty’s game, it’s that he currently LEADS THE NHL IN OVERALL CORSI RATING AFTER 1 GAME. 

Jonas Gustavsson appears to be more than capable of making the spectacular team lifting save but needs to work on increasing his save percentage above the .900 mark.  Vesa Toskala continues to be incapable of preventing at least one horrible goal a game, but he looked relatively steady in Montreal despite that fact, with a better - but still pretty average - .897 save percentage in the game.  The Leafs still have the worst team save percentage in the NHL, and while Gustavsson brings some hope along with his monstrous frame between the pipes, he will need to improve over the course of the season.

On the team statistical front, the Leafs can be proud of their power play which currently ranks first in the NHL at 28%, their shots for per game which ranks 6th at 32.9.  They sit 17th in shots against per game, with 30, which ranks them in the middle of the pack.  Giving up 35 to Montreal in the last game of the trip helped bump that up to where it is.

Areas of concern continue to be team defense and goaltending, as they give up the most goals against in the League at 4.08 per game.  The offensive side of things isn’t much better as they produce the 24th highest total in the league at 2.50, tying them with Florida.  That of course is mainly due to the output of their power play, which is an issue as they have the 2nd worst ratio of 5 on 5 production in the NHL at 0.54, ahead of only the Minnesota Wild at 0.52.  They’re giving up 5 on 5 goals almost twice as often as they’re scoring them.

The Leafs’ penalty kill is still pretty horrific at a league worst 66.7%, though it was an improved 73.9% on the road trip.  That would still only rank them 27th in the NHL for the season though, so they have a LONG LONG way to go before they are respectable on that front.  The 15th ranked teams in the NHL have kill rates of 80% on the PK, so the Leafs will need a nice long stretch of kills to get up to that total.  By way of comparison, the Edmonton Oilers (who sit at 80%) have five games already in which they haven’t given up a power play marker.  The Leafs have only had two of those games, and one of them was a night where Ottawa only got one PP opportunity.

From a team toughness perspective, the team seems more ornery, despite the fact that they haven’t taken a major penalty in the past 3 games.  They are tied for the 3rd highest total of major penalties in the NHL with 11.  The Leafs also have the 5th highest average of penalty minutes per game at 16.9 minutes.

So we know what areas the team needs to focus on, but they’re definitely more competitive than they were a week ago. Fewer goals against in general, but especially while short handed.  More goals at 5-on-5, and a better effort in the first period.  Scoring the first goal of the game more often would be a step in that direction.