BURSTTORONTO — The goalies get to play too.
Most hockey evaluations that end with, “they wouldn’t have won if their goalie didn’t play well” are irrelevant if the goalie is, y’know, legitimately good.
Because, as we know, NHL teams usually don’t win if their best players don’t play well, and so if you’re a team that pays a good goalie to make saves other teams don’t get, and they make saves other teams don’t get, well, that’s just one of the good players on your team playing well.
I realize that was a long journey to get to this point, but here we are: “Anthony Stolarz playing well and helping the Toronto Maple Leafs win is not an indictment of the team.” He is an asset of theirs, he did his thing, and they got two road points, ugly as it may have seemed at times.
In fact, there’s a lot to like about the way the Leafs are positioned, even though there’s clearly a lot to work on. Most teams are not afforded the luxury they have ahead of them.
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Hockey can be a cruel game. The result doesn’t always match the quality of play, because we play with a misshapen object on ice and bounces have a say, too. Because of that, we play a lot of games for things to even out, and we play long playoff series in hopes of finding the truly best team between the combatants.
But the reality is, the season is much shorter than we often make it out to be. For one, every team has to make a decision by the start of March about whether they’re going to try to be competitive or not, thanks to the trade deadline. At that time, at least 10-12 teams essentially stop digging their spurs into their players to push with all they can, they then trade some good players for assets, and any pressure they may have felt is alleviated. Their season as a team is essentially over, and they enter the “play-for-yourself” window.
Further, though, is that because the NHL awards three points for some games and two for others, like absolute lunatics, it’s nearly impossible to make up substantial ground in the standings. Even struggling teams grab loser points here and there while they find their form, allowing them to keep their head above water during their lowest periods of down play.
That means you need points, and plenty of them, by about the end of November (American Thanksgiving has become the imaginary cut-off), or mid-quality teams won’t have much of a chance. Each year, as I’ve written before, just three or four teams who are out of a playoff spot at this time find their way in, meaning the aforementioned 10-12 teams that make trades at the deadline are probably cooked long before they realize it.
And so, I bring you back to the point about the goaltending, and how 82 games is in fact a long season, for those with the luxury of using it, like the Leafs. You can alter your systems, your lines and your general strategy. You can trade for players, cut players, pick them up off waivers and call them up. You can do plenty of tinkering, but to my above points about the standings, it’s all for naught if you’re at the bottom of the table right now.
And so Stolarz, and Joseph Woll, have given the Leafs a gift, and it’s one they need to use: they’ve given them the gift of time, of 82 games, to cure what ails them.
Because so far under new coach Craig Berube, what ails them is both significant and obvious. They can’t produce a lick at even-strength compared to the Toronto Maple Leafs we’ve seen over the Core Four era.
Those teams have fallen short, so I know many are happy the team is different and finding success without that offensive element, but you need to understand that there’s a baseline of offensive proficiency that needs to be achieved before the maxim “defence wins championships” is even relevant.
Of the six teams that have been in the Stanley Cup Final the past three years, all six were at least inside the top 10 in expected goals for, a stat we’ll look more at in a bit. The Tampa teams that won the Cup in the years before that were obviously in that group too. Defence is key, assuming you have some offence.
When Auston Matthews fired the puck over the glove of Jacob Markstrom in overtime to seal a 2-1 win over the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday, he registered the Maple Leafs’ seventh Grade-A opportunity of the game, as tallied by SportLogiq. Those were: five Matthews breakaways (one technically a 2-on-1), a Matthews-to-Marner pass (shot wide), and a blind spin-backhand from Connor Dewar that almost connected with Pontus Holmberg but didn’t.
It was pretty concentrated in one player, and only one of those Matthews events was at five-on-five (most were shorthanded or in overtime).
At five-on-five, their expected goals for totalled 1.51 (according to Natural Stat Trick). They had it up to 2.35 vs. Pittsburgh, but here are their “expected goals for” totals from the five games before that:
12/06 vs. WSH: 1.42
12/04 vs. NSH: 1.66
12/02 vs. CHI: 1.13
11/30 vs. TB: 1.51
11/27 vs. FLA: 0.99
For context on this stat, the league’s top team is Carolina, with a per-game expected goals for rate of 3.07, while dead last is Detroit, which sits at 2.08. The Leafs are 25th, at 2.35 per game overall, and have consistently been well below that for some time now.
Bobby McMann might help a little, Calle Jarnkrok too (someday, maybe), but that’s not enough of an excuse to hand-wave away their pop-gun offence. Missing Jake McCabe has had a negative effect for sure, but even before this recent run, it had been bad going back to the start of November, when Matthews was injured.
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With that noted, though, I’m not here to get into the “why” they aren’t creating as much, as I’ve addressed that part in my earlier piece, “Maple Leafs have succeeded at playing low-event hockey, but should that be their goal?”
I’m more interested in noting that their exceptional goaltending has bought them the luxury of time, something very few teams feel they have in December when they’re not in first place, yet still have Stanley Cup aspirations.
With their win on Tuesday in New Jersey, the Leafs are two points behind the Florida Panthers, with a game in hand. They’re getting healthier, as evidenced by Matthews’ performance, and the return of Max Domi and Max Pacioretty.
They’re miles from any panic, can clearly see their shortcoming, and can set to work on the prescription.
They need the power-play success they intermittently found with Matthews out. They need some outside help, probably at left wing, and definitely at third-line centre. They also need McCabe back.
The Leafs’ style will lead to the type of close games, and from those, you like being the team with a stable of game-breaking stars. There will be moments, and opportunities ahead for those guys. They just need to make sure they can score enough overall to have those moments come in games that truly matter, deep into playoffs.
Thanks to Stolarz and Woll, they’ll have some time here to figure out how to make that happen.
