The 2021 Toronto Maple Leafs win games at a rate they rarely enjoy. The team sits at the top of the Canadian division with a 11-2-1 record. They have defeated every team they share the division with. Their +16 goal differential is the second-best in the NHL. The season may be early, but something feels different about this Maple Leafs team. How do the Leafs win so much? What does it take to succeed in today’s NHL? What does this Maple Leafs team have that Leafs’ teams in the past didn’t?
Success in the NHL
The 2020-2021 NHL season is fully underway and with each team playing about 10 games or more, enough time has passed to analyze what drives success in this league. While some may say it’s talent, or perhaps a team having an identity, the standings so far illustrate a point that has been made clear over the last several seasons. In the NHL, it is important to have a strong team identity. That’s not all it takes, though. The best teams in the league are the teams that have the most paths to victory.
The Tampa Bay Lightning have a relentless offence. Their main identity is scoring goals. Last year, however, they added grit to the lineup and steamrolled the playoffs on their way to a Stanley Cup. Conversely, The Boston Bruins would probably prefer to win a game in which they suffocate their opponent with good fundamental defending. That being said, with their high-end scoring forwards, they can keep up in a track meet. Tuukka Rask can steal the Boston Bruins a game.
What does this have to do with the Toronto Maple Leafs? Well, this far into the season, that factor is what separates this Toronto club from those of the recent past. The 2021 Toronto Maple Leafs win in new ways.
Toronto Maple Leafs Finding New Ways to Win
The results speak for themselves as the Leafs have been winning games at a ridiculous rate. Is this sustainable? Certainly not. The Maple Leafs will lose games, and they’ll be losing more than they have recently. But this isn’t about sustaining an impossible win record. This is about creating a winning formula and culture. Let’s look at how Toronto has improved their formula through the lens that has been previously established.
Team Identity
In past years, the Maple Leafs actually had a pretty well-defined team identity. They scored and they scored in waves. Outscoring the opponent, however, became the only way the Leafs ever seemed to win games. They featured a porous defence, and while the goaltending was strong at times, Frederik Andersen was rarely enough to steal games in goal.
Changes in Identity
Ironically, the Maple Leafs ability to score with depth sometimes hindered their top-line production. The Leafs pay four forwards (Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Mitch Marner and William Nylander) $40 million. Those forwards always performed fairly well, but the Leafs also had players like Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson who were also expected to contribute offensively. With other talented players, the depth players had to be given significant ice time. During the offseason, Toronto traded both Kapanen and Johnsson. This signalled a commitment from the Maple Leafs that they would still be a scoring team, but the scoring would come from the people making the most money.
The result? Each of the “big four” is either at or hovering around, a point per game. Auston Matthews is playing three more minutes per game than his career average at 21:59 TOI and Marner is averaging an astounding five minutes more per game than his career average at 23:02 TOI. With forwards throughout the rest of the lineup with defined roles such as adding grit or penalty-killing, the Leafs have refined their identity instead of completely changing it with great success.
New Paths to Victory
Toronto already had no trouble scoring, though. So why should it matter where it comes from and which players are being featured? The Leafs giving a bit more responsibility to “the big four” allowed the team to acquire players that could accomplish things past Leafs teams simply couldn’t accomplish. Wayne Simmonds is a great example of this. Before Simmonds’ injury, the forward was providing a useful new dimension to the Leafs forward lineup. It’s an “old-time hockey” trope to declare that fighting helps win games, but it’s impossible to deny that Simmonds brought new energy to the Leafs’ play. This isn’t just in the way of fighting, but providing powerplay production and adding a bit of grit to the lineup.
Similarly, swapping Tyson Barrie for TJ Brodie and bringing in some other defenders, as well as the rapid improvement of Justin Holl, has allowed Toronto to play a much more disciplined defensive game. Frederik Andersen has not been stellar in goal, yet the Leafs are still able to win some games by playing good defence to support Andersen.
Are the Maple Leafs the toughest team in the league? Certainly not, nor do they have the best defence. But the best teams in the league usually are very good at one thing, and serviceable at others. As the saying goes, “The proof is in the pudding” and it’s clear that these added dimensions show that the 2021 Maple Leafs win in new ways.
Results
It’s difficult to pick out a singular game that best exemplifies this, as it’s more of a broader trend. That being said, the Leafs most recent game (as of this writing) against the Montreal Canadiens on February 10th is a good example. In the past, this was a game in which the Leafs probably don’t come out on top. They got out-chanced and outshot 35-24. Maple Leafs teams of the last few years had a simple formula for being beaten. Take the top-end production out of play and make their depth beat you. If the Leafs got significantly outshot in past seasons, it was likely they weren’t going to win.
Against the Canadiens, none of the Leafs main offensive players scored a goal (though three of the “big four” did register assists.) Instead, the Leafs got goals from Travis Dermott, Justin Holl, Ilya Mikheyev (all of them scoring their first of the season) and Zach Hyman. These players are all important in the Leafs new makeup as a team that can win games even if plan A doesn’t work out. The Maple Leafs still prefer that plan A does work, but they no longer require it.
Sustainability
Will the Toronto Maple Leafs win at this rate going forward? As mentioned, keeping up a 85.7% points percentage pace is impossible. It is also difficult to praise a team for winning games they should likely lose as that is also not sustainable. But the Leafs aren’t being outplayed every night. The key to this Toronto team’s success is that they still have ways to win even when they are outplayed. This is a dimension the Leafs usually sorely lack.
If Toronto can continue getting big contributions out of their top players most nights, while also finding ways to rack up points on nights it doesn’t go their way, this team should be set up for future success. The Maple Leafs aren’t a perfect team, but one could argue that they are no longer a team that has a singular fatal flaw. This isn’t about winning every game, it’s about creating a winning formula. The Maple Leafs may just have found that formula.
