The Toronto Maple Leafs are playing fun hockey lately, but they really need to fix their defensive issues. When you look back on the past decade of Stanley Cup winners, there’s one thing that they all have in common. Not only are they good at scoring goals, but they’re even better at defending them. There’s a reason why the old saying “defense wins championships” continues to be said on a yearly basis, and that’s because it’s true. However, some teams continue to ignore this, as they think they can outscore their issues, and the Leafs are currently that team.
When the playoffs come around, that could change, as I’d expect GM Brad Treliving to make a few trades, but at this current moment, the Leafs are fantastic at scoring goals, but pretty bad at defending them, which won’t work in the playoffs.
What’s been the Toronto Maple Leafs biggest issue when the playoffs start every year? It’s that they always seem to run into a hot goaltender. However, why can’t that be reversed and the Leafs be the team that all of a sudden has that hot goalie?
Well, it can, if they use some of their resources and make a trade to acquire some legitimate top-four defensive talent. I looked at the past decade of Stanley Cup winners and studied two simple stats to see how Toronto compared: Goals For and Goals Against. Sure, you could dive into some analytics or figure out a different trend to understand which team was successful in the playoffs, but I wanted to understand if teams could outscore their issues more than they could out-defend it. I assumed that teams who could win 2-1 games would be much more likely to win playoff games than those who were winning 6-5 games in the regular season, and that logic seemed true
