Was the Leafs Good Health last season overhyped?

[CantLoseWithMatthews]

Who knows. As I said, it's pretty difficult to quantify. It's pretty tough to suggest they would not have done worse though.

exactly, every team would do worse with a significant injury to their best player. I think everyone agrees on that and I think that's about all the discussion there is to have on this topic
However, there are so many factors centered around luck that determine the success or failure of a season that it's not great to narrow it down to only one

 

[cneely]

Of course serious injuries would probably would have negatively impacted the Leafs and cost them a playoff spot. They barely made it by a single point after all. However, and this is why I mention the rookie factor, we also don't know how many points inexperience cost them.

E.g. in their first 19 games last year they were 7-4 when leading after 2 periods. This year they're 6-0 in their first 19 games when leading after 2 periods. The Leafs went on to finish the season with 9 losses when leading after 2 periods while the rest of the Atlantic division averaged about 3 total losses at the end of the year when leading after 2 periods.

So yes, serious injuries would have hurt them but I'm also trying to point out that they did face another major obstacle in their reliance on rookies which no other team came close to (as well as the whole shootout thing which you addressed). Does that even things out when you compare the Leafs season to a team facing an average amount of injuries? I don't know. Maybe.

Maybe, and that's completely fair.
Their youth and inexperience was one of the reasons I thought they would miss the playoffs last year. I fully expect though, that every year they should just organically get better through the young guns gaining experience, and through replacing guys like Polak with more skilled youth.

I think anyone who isn't trying to get a rise out of Leafs fans can intelligently discuss the fact that they are a quality team on the rise. It's not insulting to suggest they did have a lot of things go right for them last year though.

 

[cneely]

exactly, every team would do worse with a significant injury to their best player. I think everyone agrees on that and I think that's about all the discussion there is to have on this topic
However, there are so many factors centered around luck that determine the success or failure of a season that it's not great to narrow it down to only one

Sure. We agree.
The thread was about people "overhyping" (whatever that means) the Leaf's health last year though to be fair.

 

[TDK67]

Maybe, and that's completely fair.
Their youth and inexperience was one of the reasons I thought they would miss the playoffs last year. I fully expect though, that every year they should just organically get better through the young guns gaining experience, and through replacing guys like Polak with more skilled youth.

I think anyone who isn't trying to get a rise out of Leafs fans can intelligently discuss the fact that they are a quality team on the rise. It's not insulting to suggest they did have a lot of things go right for them last year though.

Totally agree. I only get irritated and jump in when some people want to get trollish and bust out the "EVERY SINGLE THING WAS PERFECT FOR THE LEAFS LAST YEAR AND THEIR SUCCESS WAS 100% LUCK" argument because that's just stupid and ignorant.

 

[Canada4Gold]

This thread was an annoying read. OP is very clearly annoying but I think he did a huge disservice to himself by only putting health in the title, and OP. It got people only talking about health and ignoring everything else.

I think you'd be foolish to say the Leafs weren't lucky with good health last year. Even with the Leafs having perhaps a sports science department that helps keep up healthier by between game things as well as less TOI for players than average, and a style/players that perhaps are less injury prone it's impossible to be as healthy as the Leafs were last year without a little or a lot of luck. I don't understand how there can be 10 pages or arguing about that but here we are.

I think(but I'm not a mindreader) that OP's point was that a lot of people said things like "Oh, everything went right for the Leafs last year and they still barely made the playoffs", I'll completely concede that health went totally in our favour, I don't understand how OP can robotically argue that for days on end. But we did in fact leave a LOT of points out on the ice due to being historically awful at the shootout, and blowing an incredible amount of leads, perhaps due to inexperience. Is our own team to blame for these things instead of luck? Perhaps, I think there's a lot of luck in the shootout, but there is some skill involved for sure(as there is in injuries though), the blowing leads thing is likely on ourselves, but even with a bad team it's really tough to blow that many leads late so I would say there might be a little bit of bad luck in that as well.

I think the point was, or it should be if it isn't that while the Leafs were lucky on the injury issue last year that people did perhaps overdo it by saying everything went the Leafs way last year. Health went the Leafs way last year, and then a couple other things didn't go the Leafs way last year.

 

[Pookie]

Totally agree. I only get irritated and jump in when some people want to get trollish and bust out the "EVERY SINGLE THING WAS PERFECT FOR THE LEAFS LAST YEAR AND THEIR SUCCESS WAS 100% LUCK" argument because that's just stupid and ignorant.

In the end though, what does it matter? You aren't going to convince everyone on the internet to join our playoff parade.

We got in. They didn't.

That's enough for me.

Kings fans don't feel bad about their Cup "win" in 1993 when Kerry Fraser's whistle malfunctioned

 

[cneely]

I think you'd be foolish to say the Leafs weren't lucky with good health last year. Even with the Leafs having perhaps a sports science department that helps keep up healthier by between game things as well as less TOI for players than average, and a style/players that perhaps are less injury prone it's impossible to be as healthy as the Leafs were last year without a little or a lot of luck. I don't understand how there can be 10 pages or arguing about that but here we are.

I think that's a key point too. One of the biggest problems for the Jets last year was the fact that their injuries on defence that forced them to play Buff sometimes 30 minutes a night. Tired Buff is not very good.

I think(but I'm not a mindreader) that OP's point was that a lot of people said things like "Oh, everything went right for the Leafs last year and they still barely made the playoffs", I'll completely concede that health went totally in our favour, I don't understand how OP can robotically argue that for days on end. But we did in fact leave a LOT of points out on the ice due to being historically awful at the shootout, and blowing an incredible amount of leads, perhaps due to inexperience. Is our own team to blame for these things instead of luck? Perhaps, I think there's a lot of luck in the shootout, but there is some skill involved for sure(as there is in injuries though), the blowing leads thing is likely on ourselves, but even with a bad team it's really tough to blow that many leads late so I would say there might be a little bit of bad luck in that as well.

I think the point was, or it should be if it isn't that while the Leafs were lucky on the injury issue last year that people did perhaps overdo it by saying everything went the Leafs way last year. Health went the Leafs way last year, and then a couple other things didn't go the Leafs way last year.

I think a lot of things that went wrong (blown leads, failure to close out close games) are a result of youth and inexperience, and that's what led people to doubt their ability to make the playoffs in 15-16. At least, that's the way I felt. Those things are less about luck, and more about youth, just IMO. However, the great news is that their core of the big three plus Rielly are only going to get older and more experienced. Those things will sort themselves out over time, especially with quality coaching.

 

[Shruggs Peterson]

This thread was an annoying read. OP is very clearly annoying but I think he did a huge disservice to himself by only putting health in the title, and OP. It got people only talking about health and ignoring everything else.

There were a lot of threads in the off season that inspired this vindictive streak the OP has regarding the Leafs health last year.

 

[Canada4Gold]

There were a lot of threads in the off season that inspired this vindictive streak the OP has regarding the Leafs health last year.

I'm well aware. Like I said it seemed to me that a lot of people saw the Leafs health as lucky(which it was) and started to say well everything went right for the Leafs last year, and they wouldn't have made the playoffs without it. I saw it all offseason too. Maybe it's not what OP was going for and maybe it was, but everything didn't go the Leafs way last year. Health did, and if people want to talk about that go for it, it's true, as much as OP seems to want to argue it's not. If people think injuries is the only thing affected by luck then just go ahead and say a lack injuries helped the Leafs make the playoffs last year. If you're going to infer there were multiple factors(which a lot of people did int he offseason) then name them, because as far as I can tell the others went against the Leafs. They could have easily had an extra 10-15 points if they didn't lose just about every game where they were up 1 with 2 minutes left in the first 2 months of last season and lost every shootout except 1. A buffer that would have allowed them to lose a few points from obtaining injuries and still make the playoffs.

 

[LeafFever]

Leafs fans don't want to admit that if they had any injury of significance they wouldn't have made the playoffs. That's the reason for this thread...

Non Leaf fans do not want to talk or acknowledge the Shootout situation which was actually a big part of the reason for the thread and was actually mentioned in it.
They are at least ahead of Ottawa with an avg record.

The entire point was, not once in my life can I ever recall a team's health being mentioned so much and such an issue. Especially considering they were not the healthiest.

 

[Christ]

The Leafs have continued to be super healthy. Three games of Matthews from an incredibly deep forward corps is not a major issue.



Come back when you lose Gardiner, Rielly, Andersen, and 1/2 your top-6.

Is any team going to play well after losing their top two defensemen, their starting goaltender and 3 of their top 6 forwards? As far as I can tell, no team can play through such a scenario and hope to be successful.

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

10 pages of "Not Over Hyped"

 

[Romang67]

Non Leaf fans do not want to talk or acknowledge the Shootout situation which was actually a big part of the reason for the thread and was actually mentioned in it.
They are at least ahead of Ottawa with an avg record.

The entire point was, not once in my life can I ever recall a team's health being mentioned so much and such an issue. Especially considering they were not the healthiest.

Maybe they're worried about straying off topic in a thread that is supposed to be about the Leafs' health?

 

[Hunter368]

This is such a funny thread about absolutely nothing or perhaps as some have suggested just a really badly worded thread with an incorrect title.

 

[The Winter Soldier]

No they were incredibly healthy and lucky last year, they made the playoffs by the skin of their teeth, one point. What more needs to be said in this thread?

 

[IPS]

I think the fact that they made the playoffs having an absurd amount of rookies playing key positions is what was the highlight of last season. But on HFBoards - where the Leafs live rent-free in everyone's heads - people can only focus on how healthy they were in some desperate attempt to convince themselves the Leafs aren't as good as they actually are.

 

[IPS]

You're both right and I'm personally not saying that the Leafs didn't benefit from good health or weren't one of the healthier teams in the league. I have issues with people acting like

a) "they were by far the healthiest" which is just blatantly false bullsh**

b) "their season went perfect because of no injuries" which ignores abysmal shootout luck and a roster driven by inexperience (i.e. rookies). Like I said in another comment the Leafs iced rookies in almost 2x as many man games to the next closest team which is an actual example of the Leafs having "by far the most" of anything last year (i.e. inexperience). That level of reliance on rookies is NOT an actual recipe for success or "perfect luck".

They're just bitter my friend. The monumental success the Leafs had last season still annoys them to no end They wouldn't be participating in this thread if it didn't.

 

[YesCubed]

It's okay that the Leafs were extremely lucky with injuries last season. They deserve that luck for being ballsy enough to play 7 rookies all year.

It's pretty well documented that the shootout is largely luck based given the massive variance teams experience in year-to-year shootout win percentages. People claiming otherwise need to educate themselves. Takes a 2 min google search to see numerous articles about that phenomenon. Here's one with an excerpt:

The luck of the shootout

For example, the table below shows all 30 teams and their year-to-year win percentage in the shootout. It's a jumbled mess.

There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason as to why teams, good or bad and skilled or unskilled, fluctuate so wildly from year to year outside of luck and random chance. And some of the changes are drastic.

It looks like a jumbled mess because they stuffed 30 teams into that small ass graph.

 

[Ryan Michaels]

No, not really. They were healthy all year in every important area, any Leaf fan who tells you otherwise is lying for reasons that I don't understand. What I do think was beyond idiotic was the notion that it was some sort of perfect aligning of all things in the universe. They were horrible in the shootout, they blew a ton of leads, these were things that would be hard to replicate to the degree they did them, Matthews went 13 games without a goal while still playing excellently(anyone want to bet that happens again? Like ever?). There foundation was 3 star rookies one of whom(I'll let you guess) had a snowballs chance in hell at a sophomore slump(didn't stop some of the hf brain trust to predict one), and since there were so many young players they all had a good chance of improving.

The "career years" they got out of many players were also young guys who were getting better for the most part Kadri and Rielly in particular have obviously been on an upwards trajectory since Babock got here, as was Gardiner but he has been less than stellar this season so I guess thats one point for the detractors(tho we'll see if it lasts). JVR and Bozak, well they have been pretty much the same players forever, I think Bozak beat his career best by like 2 points.

 

[Karl Eriksson]

So so healthy

 

[TDK67]

It's okay that the Leafs were extremely lucky with injuries last season. They deserve that luck for being ballsy enough to play 7 rookies all year.



It looks like a jumbled mess because they stuffed 30 teams into that small ass graph.

Haha fair enough

However the fact remains that shootout results generally vary quite a bit year-to-year. Some of that is the nature of the shootout itself and some of that is the fact there are so few data points each year for each team. If teams averaged 30 shootouts per year versus 6-7 then maybe we can draw more reliable conclusions about which teams are better than others.

 

[PatriceBergeronFan]

They're just bitter my friend. The monumental success the Leafs had last season still annoys them to no end They wouldn't be participating in this thread if it didn't.

Monumental success?

I think you overestimate this so called bitterness of non-Toronto fans.

 

[Canada4Gold]

Haha fair enough

However the fact remains that shootout results generally vary quite a bit year-to-year. Some of that is the nature of the shootout itself and some of that is the fact there are so few data points each year for each team. If teams averaged 30 shootouts per year versus 6-7 then maybe we can draw more reliable conclusions about which teams are better than others.

I remember reading somewhere that the year to year correlation of shootout results were almost non existent. Meaning the R^2 value of teams records in shootouts compared to their record in the shootout the following year was very close to 0. Which would mean that it's pretty much entirely luck based and not based on the actual personnel. But I've looked for an couldn't find the article. The closest I could find was the year to year individual players correlation and the following

NHL Shootout is a Crapshoot

Along with a student (Laura Daley), we looked at year to year correlation among players with more than 10 shots per year and none of those correlation were larger than 0.1. Thus, player performance does not seem to be related (except about the mean) from year to year.

Which suggests the same thing in a way. That not only is shootout talent not related to normal hockey talent(I found a couple of those articles) but shootout results aren't repeatable at all and mostly just random luck. I was disappointed I couldn't find the year to year team correlation.

 

[Isaac Nootin]

If anything, the Leafs were unlucky (on the ice) last year. Sure health was on their side, but that's what youth, limited toi, and superior facilities, medical staff etc. will do for you. Not sure why that's so complicated for some.

 

[IPS]

Monumental success?

I think you overestimate this so called bitterness of non-Toronto fans.

Yeah, monumental success.

Who predicted the Leafs to make playoffs last year? When was the last time a team who played as many rookies as the Leafs regularly made the playoffs? How many folks were predicting the Leafs to be one of the worst teams in the league?

Sounds like a monumental success to me. People cannot bring themselves to admit what an incredible feat the Leafs accomplished last year because of how bitter they are So go ahead my good amigo, reference me the last team who accomplished this.