TORONTO – By all accounts, the Toronto Maple Leafs have not talked about it. Many of the players seem to be unaware of it.
But with three-quarters of the season played and the stretch drive at hand, this group has the chance to do something special: It is but a reasonable finish away from compiling the most wins and points in the organization’s 101-year history.
“We’ve worked hard certainly to be considered one of the better teams in the league this year, so that would just solidify that,” Nazem Kadri said Tuesday before a visit by the Florida Panthers. “There’s a long history and a Maple Leafs tradition and I think that’s a heck of an achievement.
“It’s definitely an extra pat on the back.”
Toronto needs 10 wins over its final 21 games to establish a new franchise-best mark of 46.
It would take another 27 points for the Leafs to reach 104 for the first time ever – something that could be accomplished with a finish of 12-6-3. That’s a high bar, but not completely out of the question, given the schedule that awaits.
Both potential milestones reflect a feeling inside the dressing room that this is the best Leafs team in a long time. Kadri says it’s easily the strongest group he’s been part of since getting selected seventh overall in 2009, pointing to the depth as a differentiator from last season.
“I think it’s the most lethal and definitely offensively the most dangerous team,” he said.
It’s playing well above the 96-point target coach Mike Babcock established at the start of the season when he divided the schedule into five-game segments and urged the players to aim for six points in each. That ask hasn’t changed even with their current 10-2-0 run.
“Sometimes you have a better segment and it makes up for the segment when you dropped the ball and you didn’t quite get it done,” said Babcock. “But I think just the idea of keeping your focus on the short term.”
Once we get beyond the trade deadline and the calendar flips to March, it’s natural to zoom out.
Pat Quinn’s Leafs teams were the most successful during the post-Cup years – with the 2003-04 squad at the front of the pack in wins (45), points (103) and points percentage (.628). Each of those marks is in reach for Babcock’s bunch.
Determining the organization’s best regular season of all time is complicated by context: The NHL has used several different formats, schedules and alignments over the years. But it probably should belong to one of the four Leafs teams to lead the regular season in points – the last of which came in 1962-63.
[snippet id=3638225]
For those keeping score at home … yes, that means Toronto has had the NHL’s best regular season just four times in 100 tries.
The current Leafs aren’t a serious threat to claim the Presidents’ Trophy – not with all five teams ahead of them enjoying games in hand – but they have been better than most of their predecessors.
They’ve managed to do it by keeping the lulls to a minimum, with a 2-6-0 stretch starting in late October and a 3-4-3 run through late December and half of January among the exceptions.
“I mean we weren’t dumping games 4-0 in regulation during that stretch of time,” veteran defenceman Ron Hainsey said recently, referring to the January struggles. “We weren’t closing out a few [games] and the goal scoring for us went from robust to slightly less. So you have less of a margin for error, obviously, and now the pucks have gone in a lot more in the last little while and we’re having more success.”
Tongue-in-cheek, he called that the “panic time” in Toronto. All is quiet now.
While the measure of this group will ultimately be determined by its performance in the playoffs, the regular season has offered some encouraging signs about what’s to come.
“I mean I think anything’s possible,” said Hainsey. “We’re playing well.”
[relatedlinks]