After an abysmal start to the season, in which they won just one game through the entire month of October, the Toronto Maple Leafs have begun doing something nobody expected them to: play well. To be fair, they weren’t actually playing that badly in October – only two of their losses were by a margin greater than two goals, and they were noticeably competitive in every game. In fact, in the month of October they were fourth in the entire NHL for shot attempts percentage with 53.87% of shot attempts for in a game. The problem was, they were completely unable to score, and suffered from a severely low shooting percentage around 7%, and some lacklustre performances from Jonathan Bernier cost them a few points as well.
November has been a completely different story. As of Tuesday morning the Leafs are 6-3-1-2 this month, with James Reimer earning (at least temporarily) the starting job for himself, posting an incredible franchise record .953 save percentage over a recent stretch of ten games, being named the NHL’s third star last week. The players in front of him have finally had bounces go their way, scoring 32 goals in twelve games, as opposed to 20 in October, including a 5-1 drubbing of the Colorado Avalanche. The Leafs still sit last in the Atlantic Division, but considering how mediocre the Eastern Conference is, they find themselves just 4 points behind the New York Islanders in the final wild card spot. This hot streak is sure to end, but with the way the team is playing it seems like they might not actually be as bad as they were expected to be in September. Many fans were indeed hoping for a trainwreck of a year, with the promise of a shiny new Auston Matthews or Matthew Tkachuk waiting at the end. So, the question is this: is the Leafs winning good or bad for the rebuild?
First, we have to consider the ineffectiveness of tanking for a good draft pick. People can talk about the “Pittsburgh model” all they want, but I don’t see how winning the lottery and being gifted with two generational talents can qualify as a viable model to follow. The Edmonton Oilers seem to end up with a high draft pick every year, and where are they now? Detroit, on the other hand, are competitive every single season, with their 24-season playoff streak, yet still manage to maintain a strong crop of prospects – Gustav Nyquist, Tomas Jurco and Dylan Larkin all spring to mind recently. Good teams certainly are built through the draft, but they are not built only through high first-rounders. Drafting well in every round is essential. So, even in a system where the last-place team is guaranteed the top pick, there is no certainty that it will turn your team around.
The system isn’t even like that, either. This year, the NHL will be using an NBA-style lottery, where the top three picks are determined by weighted chance. That means the 30th-ranked team will only be able to lock up the fourth overall pick, no matter how much they suck. The idea behind this is to discourage tanking (like the Sabres so blatantly did last year), and I think it works, to some degree. The rewards are less, and there is a higher chance of still being rewarded nicely with just a respectably bad season, rather than a horrendously bad one. You could finish one point out of a playoff spot in April, playing competitive hockey the whole way through, and still have a reasonable chance of a top-three pick (1% chance to get the first overall).
So, the idea of tanking is not as attractive as it may once have been. The argument swings even more in opposition to tanking when one considers the benefits of winning for the Leafs. With nine players on expiring contracts, one has to assume they will be active sellers at the trade deadline. The motivation for players like Michael Grabner and Shawn Matthias is not to help the team, but to increase their trade value by playing well so they can be dealt to a contender February. Winning games is very much welcomed, but not strictly necessary for these players – and for Leafs management, who will want to get as many draft picks and prospects as possible out of the low-risk contracts they signed during the summer.
Once all these guys on one-year deals have played their way out of Toronto, the question then becomes one of who will play for the NHL team. The argument against calling up young players like William Nylander has always been that it’s damaging to expose them to the culture of a losing team for too long. So, if the team’s core that survives the deadline—probably the group comprised of Dion Phaneuf, James van Riemsdyk, Tyler Bozak, and co.—has been playing decent, competitive hockey and winning games, there should be no problem with Nylander, or perhaps Kasperi Kapanen or Connor Brown, graduating from the AHL to fill the spaces that have become available near the end of the season.
Let’s not forget, too, that Mike Babcock is the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He is absolutely not a man who would take kindly to any indication from management that the team should play badly this season. He will (and, to an extent, has) push every single player to their optimal performance, while incessantly preaching his systems. In fact, he has actually requested that the Toronto Marlies adopt the same systems as the NHL club, meaning it could be a smooth transition to the Leafs should someone like Nylander get the call. We’ve seen improvements this year from Dion Phaneuf, who no longer looks like a defensive liability, and has produced at about 0.5 points per game. Tyler Bozak has been a pleasant surprise, leading the team in points with 14 in 18 games, not collapsing like many thought he would with the loss of his long-time linemate Phil Kessel. And of course Morgan Rielly is becoming more and more impressive every day, as he has developed into the stud defenceman we all hoped he would.
The Maple Leafs are by no means a good hockey team. They will not make the playoffs, don’t kid yourself. But they don’t suck as much as we thought they would. The Leafs winning is absolutely a good thing, there’s no doubt about it. It’s better for prospects, it’s better for the players already there, it’s certainly better for fans, and tanking doesn’t really work anyway.
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