Maple Leafs have problems, but aren’t this bad

TORONTO — When I sat down to write about the Toronto Maple Leafs today, reflecting on how people thought the season might go and how it’s gone, the first thing I did was search for this old tweet:

It’s a Hall of Fame tweet, and relevant for a Leafs convo. There are haters celebrating today.

Still, I was not in the haters camp. I liked some of the adds (Darren Raddysh has been great), was neutral on others, was excited about Gavin McKenna, and thought a guy like Easton Cowan would have more to give. Hell, I like Nick Paul and thought Brandon Duhaime would be a jolt of energy.

I was, however, unsure about Sergei Bobrovsky. Because I watch this team all year, I was hopeful I’d be wrong — it’s more fun to watch a winner — but it felt like a questionable bet and, at this point, it’s not going great.

So, we’re 20 games in and the Leafs are in the midst of a losing streak. They’re 1-6 in their last seven, and they play two of the league’s three best teams in their next two games. What showed up early as faint cracks are splitting.

That said, I’m here to zag: better days are ahead. The Leafs are not a .450 winning percentage team, which last season would’ve finished as the third-worst points percentage in the NHL, below the actual 2025-26 Leafs, who drafted first overall after finishing 28th.

They’re better still than a .500 team, but last year it would’ve taken a .580 points percentage to make playoffs in the East (Ottawa cleared that bar as the eighth seed with a .604) and .525 would’ve done it in the West.

So: can they get to .580? Can they be some version of the 2025-26 Buffalo Sabres, who on Nov. 11, 2005, were in last in the East before winning the division? How far gone is too far gone, as we get close to a quarter of the year being complete?

Let’s dig in.

By my math, 96 points would be just over a .580 points percentage, and although it’s debatable if that will be enough this year, we’ll use it as our benchmark. To get there, the Leafs — who have 18 points in 20 games — would need 78 more with 64 games to go. That would be a 39-25 record over those games. Call it more like a 36-22-6 for a more realistic looking record, since OT losses happen.

The positives

Early in the season, the Leafs' underlying numbers were not pretty. By expected goals, they cleared the 50 per cent benchmark in just two of their first seven games, and only four of their first 11. Their record wasn’t amazing, but it looked like a hot run of special-teams play saved them from a worse fate that they probably deserved.

But under the hood, the Leafs quietly started to find their five-on-five game. When they had that dramatic late-goal win over the Rangers on Oct. 22, they carried 56 per cent of the expected goals and deserved to win that game. That was a part a nine-game stretch in which they won just three games, yet carried the expected goals in seven of them (including five of their last six).

Score effects matter here, for sure, but even with that in mind, the underlying numbers show a recent uptick in their ability to control play.

There’s also a reality that of the Leafs' 12 losses this year (OT included), eight of them have come by a single goal (before empty-netters). There’s also been two-goal losses that come when they open it up, press, and give up a late one.

While I’m oversimplifying some of this, the point is that there’s no denying they’ve been in just about every game this year, but keep falling one short.

Needs improvement

Unfortunately for their fans, the Leafs are just not getting saves from their starter, Sergei Bobrovsky.

My friend Steven Valiquette runs Clear Sight Analytics, so I consulted him for some background on starting goalies this season. He found that there have been 39 goalies who have faced over 200 scoring chances, which we’ll use as a rough proxy for “starter.” 

Of those 39 goalies, Bobrovsky ranks 38th, putting up a number that’s minus-7.42 below the expected goals in that environment. He’s an .876 save percentage in a spot that would expect just a .896, costing them 7-8 goals over a year where they’ve lost eight times by a single goal.

Again, that’s the second-easier goaltending environment. Behind the same team, Anthony Stolarz has a .908 save percentage.

I had Valiquette help me understand what’s happening there, and while some of it is posture and positioning and more, the biggest thing is that he’s just trying to do too much. That reared its ugly head against Colorado in the form of attempted poke checks, rather than just sitting in his crease and playing goal.

Against Artturi Lehkonen, Bobrovsky was prepped for a poke check while the shooter was far from the net and in the act of shooting:

And again on the Gabriel Landeskog goal, he was prepping for a poke check in a spot where it didn’t seem like the puck carrier was much of a threat.

Of course, there are other breakdowns (including on both the goals shown above), but the reality is, good goalies are allowed to stop challenging shots too. 

For years now, the Leafs have had pretty darn good goaltending. Say what you will about the availability of Freddy Andersen or Joseph Woll, but when they played, they posted good numbers. Say what you will about Stolarz’s injuries, but when he plays, he’s excellent (to the point he got Vezina votes a couple years ago). 

At five-on-five, the Leafs have the league’s fourth-lowest combined save percentage, and that’s with Stolarz having a pretty darn good year.

The Leafs are also a team that, heading into the year, had one clear strength: elite playmaking and finishing talent, which was supposed to carry them through games where other teams just couldn’t hang with them from a talent perspective. One of the weaknesses of this plan is that when you lose any of those top-end guys, you don’t have much to fall back on, and it’s probably no coincidence that heading into the Flames game where Kirill Marchenko was injured, they were 7-4-2. Since then, they’re 1-6-0.

This whole “lose by a goal” thing makes that very relevant, as does having missed John Tavares for 10 games (and Chris Tanev for 10). 

Now, it’s fair to point out the obvious: the margins are thin enough that this is not some loaded team just being dealt bad breaks. You can’t play teams to what have essentially been saw-offs and say you just haven’t been lucky or you’d be much higher in the standings. 

But I think the point here, as we assess where the Leafs are, is that there’s a moving narrative that the Leafs are bad, or the same old Leafs, or that disaster looms, and, hey, when you dig a hole as deep as they have, disaster may well loom, that’s true.

But I think it’s important to zoom out, and assess that this is not a team that’s bad, nor is it dead in the water. 

My co-host Nick Kypreos likes to point out that the Leafs aren’t one D-man from fixing what ails them, and that may be true. But for a team that walks the knife’s edge of winning and losing each game, a trade for a D-man — any upgrade at all — would push the percentages more in their favour.

Asking for more starts from Stolarz has to be what’s next, simply because the Leafs can’t allow the hole to get much deeper or they’ll lose the year entirely. Yes, he might get hurt, so they’ll have to manage it somewhat — he can’t play every night — but they’re at the point that it’s a risk they have to take. The Leafs can’t worry about Bobrovsky’s ego, and maybe a little checking of that will send him back into the lab to make changes for the better. 

They will get Marchenko back at some point, and he’s an undeniable needle-mover for them. Morgan Rielly is always going to be an upgrade on Dakota Mermis when he comes back. 

That this is all happening exactly as they’re playing a run of teams that are all not just playoff teams but Stanley Cup contenders, has been a mess that might get worse before it gets better.

But like eating your vegetables first, playing these teams now means that dessert should come later when they will see some softer competition, ideally healthy. It’s not out of the question that there could be a run where they find it, string some wins together, and battle their way back up the standings.

It’s true, the haters have called it correctly, honestly, great call from them. But with a few saves, a healthier lineup and maybe one addition, the underlying numbers show there’s more here than the results indicate.

It’s been a tough run, but there’s runway left.