What you need to understand zeke, is that you can reason that Reilly is elite, or Brodie is this and Muzzin is that all day long, but the truth of the matter is that defense scares no one offensively, defensively or even physically. No one is going in to a game and saying ohh boy this leafs defense is going to be tough to play against. No one has ever said that…
So while they have a good defense - somewhere around 10th best I’d say, it’s not to 3 or even top 5
I think they're in the 5-9 range interchangeably, but I dont think being scared of the defense matters here. It's a way you can build a D corp, but not the only way.
The Leafs D right now is designed to transition the puck efficiently while not being braindead and making awful reads (Barrie-types) giving a lot of that offense back.
What makes the Leafs D so effective is seldomly do they even have to consider moving bodies from the middle of the ice/their net because they don't get cycled on. They have guys who retrieve pucks and dont succumb to forcheck pressure as well.
The reason people can't evaluate defense is because our eyes see what we see, and not what we don't see. If you watch Brodie come back and get the puck off a dump in and move it up the ice efficiently before a forchecker gets to him, we see that as a lack of forcheck or limited forcheck rather than a player who moves his feet effectively and doesn't have to deal with pressure.
Their underlying numbers speak for themselves and is why the old narrative is a silly one. Dubas outright built the best D core this organization has had in 20 years. It's not even all that close. Their potential problem right now is goaltending (roll of the dice) and the 3rd/4th lines having limited offensive ability.