OK, TO has a new identity but what is it, a team that relies heavily on 6 players, the top 4 forwards, Rielly and goaltending. That's the same identity TO has had for about 4 years now.
The d results are better what was achieved in the immediate past but that's mostly because the goaltending is much better this year.
Shot attempts/60: 55.68 vs 53.67. I do not think that two less shot-attempts every four periods is really going to make a huge difference in goalie performance.
Shots/60: 30.73 vs 28.98 – This year’s Leafs are preventing just over one shot extra per game.
Expected Goals/ 60: 2.33 vs 2.25. If we could take luck out of the equation and work with a large enough sample size, the Leafs this year vs last year would be pretty the same defensively. They would be expected to allow 0.08 less goals this season for roughly every four periods of hockey.
Scoring Chances / 60: 27.50 vs 26.54 – the supposedly great new defense is allowing less than one less scoring chances every four periods or so.
Dangerous Chances / 60: 11.14 vs 10.6 – the narrative is that this version of the Leafs is allowing a lot less chances off the rush – but assuming that those are getting picked up in the dangerous chances category, this simply isn’t true.
Toronto Maple Leafs Success Isn’t Because of Good Defense
Better goaltending makes TO better, not playing Boston, TB or Florida regularly also makes TO better. Is TO better, it's hard to say but TO has done well against the west for years, Ottawa is Ottawa and Montreal, who knows what's going on there.
TO's results have exceeded the metrics which has lead to many of the fancy stat experts to wonder why TO's results are so out of line with the metrics, Colorado won their division one year even tho their metrics didn't support their success. The next year Colorado didn't come close to matching that success.
TO's identity is still basically it can outscore it's problems and that has been made easier this year by superior goaltending.
