After Washington’s loss to Carolina on Friday night, the Maple Leafs have secured their spot in the playoffs for the eighth consecutive season.
With only one game won beyond the first round of the playoffs, the Matthews-era Leafs are tied with the Boston Bruins for the longest ongoing string of playoff appearances (eight). This is a season longer than the Avalanche and Lightning.
The 2023-24 Maple Leafs, who are now on a 104-point pace, were not a clear playoff bet in 2023. On the one hand, it’s unfortunate that they weren’t a divisional playoff shoo-in by Christmas like they were in previous seasons. In another aspect, considering the following negative occurrences, it’s impressive that we’re talking about a roughly 105-point Leafs club that safely clinched with two weeks left in the regular season.
– The Leafs are sixth in the NHL for the number of man games lost due to injury. A hip injury weakened their biggest FA addition on defense, and almost immediately placed him on Long Term Injured Reserve to begin the next season.
– Tyler Bertuzzi and Max Domi, the team’s top UFA acquisitions, have scored six goals in 51 games and zero goals in 21 games, respectively. Their starter goaltender, who led them to their first postseason series victory since 2004 last spring, began the season 5-2-6 with a.862 save percentage and was placed on waivers after Christmas.
– Joseph Woll, the team’s 1B goaltender, was sidelined for nearly three months due to a high-ankle strain, coinciding with Ilya Samsonov’s waiver. Mitch Marner missed 15% of the regular season due to an injury.
– Morgan Rielly missed nine games due to injury and suspension (albeit the incident that resulted in the suspension was probably a season-defining moment).
– Calle Jarnkrok, who scored 20 goals for the team last season, will finish with fewer than 55 games played.
– TJ Brodie, who has been relied on to play big minutes against the other team’s best players for the past three seasons, has declined to the point that he has been a healthy scratch in several games recently– Timothy Liljegren, the team’s only right-handed defenseman after John Klingberg’s injury and before Ilya Lyubushkin’s arrival, has missed 25 games and counting due to injury.
It addresses a couple of (obvious) points that don’t really need explaining but are nevertheless worth appreciating: 1) Above all, their elite star players who drive the bus are excellent drivers.
2) Despite a rocky start, Sheldon Keefe is perhaps in the midst of his best stretch of (regular) season coaching in Toronto. He assisted in guiding the squad back to an acceptable (albeit imperfect) defensive framework prior to the new year, despite troubling lottery-territory defensive outcomes. The club is now ranked #1 in the league in five-on-five offense, and there has been a lot of switching and matching up and down the lineup due to injuries and sickness, as well as incorporating four first-year players into the lineup on many nights.
Just as some of the criticism was warranted for the Klingberg signing and the generally slow starts of his key FA additions, there is also some credit due to GM Brad Treliving for the additions of Martin Jones (disincentivizing a waiver claim with the contract structure), Simon Benoit, the much-improved second halves of Bertuzzi, Domi and Reaves (misgivings about the latter’s contractual terms aside, for now), and so far — as a premature statement — solid returns on the
The team has some flaws — special teams are a concern heading into the playoffs, and the defense requires major surgical intervention from management this summer — but the Leafs are among the six tightly competitive teams in the East who have a legitimate shot at making a deep run this season. Prepare yourselves for another spring of playoff hockey in Toronto.
