TOR's best hockey may still be ahead of us

[zeke]

It certainly is.

We haven't yet had a run with all our key players healthy and productive. It'll come.

 

[Joey Hoser]

Half the team is in a slump right now. Obviously they're going to break out at some point.

 

[RLF]

Yeah pretty charts are nice and everything but if you don't work hard, you have zero chance of success in the playoffs. In that regard, last nights performance was a disgrace and it's really hard for me to have confidence in this team.

Yes, in a nutshell, we need to bury more of our chances and stop more of theirs.
So, the real question is...how do you make it happen?
For one, PP has to start clicking, it has been brutal for the skill we possess. Two-work harder to get to the better scoring areas and at the least, we should draw more penalties if not score on intial chance. Three- Freddie is back for one, but also limit the 2nd chances and stop puck watching in the defensive zone. The guy behind the net with the puck isn't the dangerous guy, it's the guy he is trying to find in the slot. How about we pick that guy up so he doesn't get a clean shot.

 

[zeke]

you know what's funny?

over the last 10gms, when the leafs have slumped to 4-6-0..... not including empty netters the leafs have scored 2.4 goals per game, and given up 2.7 goals per game.

2.7 goals against per game is actually quite good defense - near top 5 in the league.
2.4 goals for per game is awful. bottom 5 in the league type stuff.

but all anyone can talk about is the defense.

 

[Vaive50]

I would hope so, as for right now we are clearly under performing. How is it even possibly that Montreal is just 1 point behind us? they have essentially AHL caliber depth down the middle whilst we have Matthews-Tavares-Kadri.

It's also cause they've played 2 games more than us and so have the Bruins. So that 1 point differential could easily be 5 points (but not the way this Leaf team has played after Christmas).

 

[kk87]

The first 30 games of the year we were abnormally lucky. Insane goaltending, lots of puck luck, power play clicking, PDO sky high, etc. Ever since, we've been ridiculously unlucky - doesn't seem like anything's gone our way since Nylander came back, no matter how well we play. It's only a matter of time before this corrects itself, and once the boys regain some momentum we'll be off to the races

 

[Vaive50]

you know what's funny?

over the last 10gms, when the leafs have slumped to 4-6-0..... not including empty netters the leafs have scored 2.4 goals per game, and given up 2.7 goals per game.

2.7 goals against per game is actually quite good defense - near top 5 in the league.
2.4 goals for per game is awful. bottom 5 in the league type stuff.

but all anyone can talk about is the defense.

Right on, I've been thinking the same thing, our offense has been very sucky lately. I mean against the Panthers, even the Tavares/Marner line couldn't score and we've been shut out twice in those 6 losses.

However when it comes to the defensive game, we have also had too many give-aways like to the Avs (Kadri and Gardiner), without those 2 give-aways, we would have been up 3-2 and had the empty net to shoot at.

 

[SniperOnTheWing]

I agree with the underlying numbers argument. People scoff when you throw numbers around but the averages always have a way of correcting themselves and nobody is immune to it. They're based on years, if not decades of statistical evidence. Think of it like the difference between climate vs weather, predicting the weather (short term - game by game basis) is hard because so many variables can change the outcome in a given game. However look at the pattern of weather over the span of many years (akin to a full season or multiple seasons) and you can see the bigger picture trend of what is sustainable and what isn't. Our first 20-25 games were unsustainable for a lot of guys (same exact thing happened last season if anybody remembers, hot start and cooled off around this time) and we're paying for it with slumps now.

Matthews shooting 30% out of the gate for example, nobody, NOBODY sustains anywhere near that rate. He was 100% guaranteed to correct downward until he settled at a more reasonable rate and that is currently occurring. Now, in a perfect world it would be a more gradual correction but in this case he hit a hard slump and its correcting hard all at once. It won't last, he will start getting his goals again and by the end of the year should settle out around the 16% or so shooting percentage hes averaged over his relatively short career to date. Even that is a bit high for many goal scorers, I wouldn't be surprised if he was more of a 14-15% shooter after his career is said and done. He's hovering around 19.5% right now so he should be close to picking it up again.

When Ovechkin came flying out of the gate and hit 30 goals media guys were saying he was going to hit 70 goals. He was also shooting like 25%, and his career average believe it or not is a mere 12.6%. He's also cooled off and is now hovering around 17.7% which is still high for him. In the end he'll get his 50+ goals but anybody who looked at his historical rates would never think he'd actually hit anywhere near 70.

You get an occasional instance where a player holds a ridiculous rate for an entire season but it always results in a crash the next year. William Karlsson anyone? Jonathan Cheechoo?

The hockey gods with their stats and averages are undefeated. This is two years in a row we get off to an unsustainably hot start which only gets peoples hopes up and makes the fanbase think we're a different team than we are, only to have outrage when we inevitably hit a slump that corrects the trend to where it should have been in the first place. I'd much rather start slower and maintain a steady pace all year than go through these wild swings but it is what it is. Maybe next year.

After the ebbs and flows of a full season settle out we should be better than we were last year thanks to the addition of Tavares and breakouts by guys like Marner and Rielly but to think we were going to crush teams all year long like we did the first third or so of the season just isn't reasonable. It's easy to get discouraged by multiple slumps occurring at once but we WILL bounce back, Matthews WILL start scoring again, hell even Nylander's luck will improve and he'll have a stronger stretch run.

TL;DR: Step back from the ledges people, everything will be fine and the team as a whole will bounce back from these temporary slumps.

 

[napoleon in rags]

you know what's funny?

over the last 10gms, when the leafs have slumped to 4-6-0..... not including empty netters the leafs have scored 2.4 goals per game, and given up 2.7 goals per game.

2.7 goals against per game is actually quite good defense - near top 5 in the league.
2.4 goals for per game is awful. bottom 5 in the league type stuff.

but all anyone can talk about is the defense.

I like this post because it talks about the only stats I really care about: Goals for and goals against.

 

[zeke]

Right on, I've been thinking the same thing, our offense has been very sucky lately. I mean against the Panthers, even the Tavares/Marner line couldn't score and we've been shut out twice in those 6 losses.

However when it comes to the defensive game, we have also had too many give-aways like to the Avs (Kadri and Gardiner), without those 2 give-aways, we would have been up 3-2 and had the empty net to shoot at.

I actually want to hone this down a bit.

Our slump has actually been the last 9gms, starting with the 4-0 loss to the Isles.

Before that we were 26-10-2, a 117pt pace. We had had a slight slump a couple weeks earlier where we went 1-2-2 over 5gms, but that was sandwiched in between two 5-gm win streaks so really wasn't anything other than a bit of a an iffy roadtrip.

But in the 9gms since then, we're 3-6-0. In those games, not including empty net goals, we've scored 2.22 goals per game, and given up 2.78 goals per game.

That is actually very good, borderline top-5 defense in terms of goals against per game. And that's with a mediocre .911sv% behind them (not including the empty net goals, which would bring it down to .902).


This slump is all on the offense, not on the defense.

 

[zeke]

I actually want to hone this down a bit.

Our slump has actually been the last 9gms, starting with the 4-0 loss to the Isles.

Before that we were 26-10-2, a 117pt pace. We had had a slight slump a couple weeks earlier where we went 1-2-2 over 5gms, but that was sandwiched in between two 5-gm win streaks so really wasn't anything other than a bit of a an iffy roadtrip.

But in the 9gms since then, we're 3-6-0. In those games, not including empty net goals, we've scored 2.22 goals per game, and given up 2.78 goals per game.

That is actually very good, borderline top-5 defense in terms of goals against per game. And that's with a mediocre .911sv% behind them (not including the empty net goals, which would bring it down to .902).


This slump is all on the offense, not on the defense.

and of course, the coach's solution is MOAR cowbellimeanhymanandbrown.

 

[RLF]

you know what's funny?

over the last 10gms, when the leafs have slumped to 4-6-0..... not including empty netters the leafs have scored 2.4 goals per game, and given up 2.7 goals per game.

2.7 goals against per game is actually quite good defense - near top 5 in the league.
2.4 goals for per game is awful. bottom 5 in the league type stuff.

but all anyone can talk about is the defense.

I agree. I didn't think our D was horrible, just when it did break down, we paid for it. The lack of production has easily been the biggest issue.