Tie Domi’s penalty mark and Doug Gilmour’s standard for points in a season seem safe. But many of the Leafs’ other magic numbers look breakable.
Unlike Habs past Price point, Leafs have plenty of records in reach
As Canadiens goaltender Carey Price spent this past week on the brink of surpassing Jacques Plante for Montreal’s franchise record for career wins, the impending accomplishment seemed vast in more ways than one.
It’s taken Price the bulk of 13 NHL seasons, many of them as the consensus No. 1 puck stopper on the planet, to find himself neck and neck with Plante at 314 victories. And if it was worth pointing out that Price partly achieved the feat thanks to the stat-padding advantages of overtimes and shootouts — and that Plante surely would have turned many of his 107 career ties into two points if presented with the same opportunities — it was still a feat to celebrate. Given Montreal’s status as the century-old gold standard of NHL franchises, the passing of such milestones can’t be tossed off as an everyday thing. They’re tougher and tougher to come by.
“This is the last great Canadiens record you will ever see,” Michael Farber, the Hockey Hall of Fame writer, posited in a video essay on TSN.
Farber’s point, and it’s a good one, is that many of the other significant high-water marks on Montreal’s rolls seem too distant to be realistic targets for members of today’s roster.
Luckily for fans of the newly resurgent Maple Leafs, the same can’t be said for plenty of Toronto’s franchise records. While the Leafs share a parallel history to their ancient rivals, comparing the career paths of their respective greats is a matter of apples and oranges.
Take, as just one example, the franchise career goals leaders. Montreal’s is the immortal Rocket Richard, for whom the league’s annual goal-scoring award is named. Toronto’s is Mats Sundin. Richard scored 545 career goals. Sundin scored 420. A Maple Leaf bent on franchise immortality has a 125-goal head start on his Montreal-based contemporary.
In other words, Price’s may be the last great Canadiens record you’ll ever see. But if all goes well, the current generation of Toronto-based NHLers may give credible chase to many Maple Leafs records to come. With that in mind, let’s take a quick tour through a smattering of Maple Leafs team marks — from the reachable to the untouchable and those located in between. Ian Turnbull’s 79 points as a Maple Leafs defenceman Reachable, imminently A while back Turnbull, now age 65 and running the IT depart- ment of a car dealership in the Los Angeles area, predicted Morgan Rielly would break his 42-year-old mark this season. Weeks later, Rielly remains in prime position to make it happen. Sitting at 64 points heading into Saturday’s game in Edmonton, Rielly needs to average about a point a game to tie Turnbull. If that’s hardly an easy feat, at least Rielly’s not trying to beat, say, the Boston record in the same category. Between Bobby Orr and Ray Bourque, a Bruins blue-liner has done better than 79 points in 16 separate seasons. Doug Gilmour’s 127-point season Untouchable, probably Forget the relative merits of current Maple Leafs and consider this: The last NHLer to score 127 points in a season was Jaromir Jagr in 1998-99. In the scoring-depleted, goaltenderdominated years since, such outbursts haven’t seemed possible. Sidney Crosby in his prime managed a career-best 120 points in 2006-07. So even if Mitch Marner is currently on pace to lead the team with a 100-point season — and even if Marner has room for improvement at age 21 — it’s easy enough to talk yourself into believing Gilmour’s mark will be safe for the ages. Then again, scoring is up this season, with teams combining for an average of six goals a game for the first time since 2005-06. Save percentage is down. And heading into Saturday, Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov was on pace to win the Art Ross Trophy with something in the neighbourhood of 130 points. If the nascent offensive boom continues, who knows? Dave Andreychuk/ Rick Vaive’s 54-goal seasons Reachable, likely Given Auston Matthews went into Saturday without a goal in five straight games, it’s easy to forget how he began this season, reeling off 10 goals and 16 points in the opening seven games. Back then it was easy enough to imagine Matthews steamrolling the team high set by Vaive and Andreychuk (the latter scoring 29 of those 54 with the Sabres in 1992-93). But things happened. Matthews missed 14 games with a shoulder injury. Linemates were inconsistent. Even when healthy, coach Mike Babcock insisted Matthews needed to more consistently rev his “engine.” Still, given Matthews’ gift for finding holes in goalies, it’s difficult to imagine he won’t eventually power through this vaunted number. Darryl Sittler’s 10 points in one game Untouchable, certainly One of the many amazing things about Sittler’s peerless night at Maple Leaf Gardens in February of 1976 is this: Not only is it the greatest individual achievement in franchise history; not only has nobody matched this level of one-night output before or since. Nobody has even been to the brink. While there’ve been many eight-point games in NHL history — Mario Lemieux had three if you include the playoffs — Sittler’s not just the only man to reach 10 points. He’s the only one to reach nine. Unless they switch to soccer nets, this one will rest in peace in perpetuity. Mats Sundin’s 987 career points Reachable, eventually Do the math. Marner, if he finishes out the season on the 100-point pace he was on heading into Saturday, will have compiled about 230 points in his three seasons as a Maple Leaf, an average of about 76 points a season. Sundin averaged about 76 points during his 13-year run in Toronto. And Marner is starting far younger while playing with a better linemate in John Tavares than Sundin could ever boast. Marner, of course, isn’t the only current Maple Leaf who could take a run at the mark. Matthews is a candidate and, unlike Marner, under contract beyond this season. Franchise record for empty-net goals in a season Reachable, definitely Call this the Coach’s Favourite Award. Only Babcock’s most trusted forwards see the ice with the opposing goalie on the bench. Last year, Patrick Marleau usurped Bill Derlago’s 34-year-old Leafs record with five empty-net markers. Zach Hyman had already matched Marleau’s mark heading into Saturday. But Hyman best not get comfortable. Marner, recently lauded by Babcock as the 200-foot reincarnation of three-time Selke Trophy winner Pavel Datsyuk, had four empty-netters. Garbage time has never been so interesting. George Armstrong’s plus-48 Reachable, by Ron Hainsey Speaking of Babcock’s favourites, the 37-year-old Hainsey is often maligned for being as outmoded as the statistic in which he leads the league. Hainsey was a plus-37 before Saturday (which might have something to do with playing alongside the plus-31 Rielly). That means Hainsey was on pace for a plus-45 season. So a late push could get him past the standard set by the captain of the 1960s dynasty. Tie Domi’s 2,265 career penalty minutes Untouchable, undoubtedly On five separate occasions during Domi’s time with the Maple Leafs, he drew 30 or more penalty minutes in a single game. Only one Maple Leaf on today’s roster has drawn more than 31 all season. That’d be Zach Hyman, who’s on pace for 69 minutes in penalties by season’s end. At that rate he’d only need to play 31 more seasons to catch Domi’s franchise standard for sin-bin residency. Turk Broda’s 302 wins Reachable, realistically With 32 wins so far, let’s assume Toronto goaltender Frederik Andersen matches his franchise record for a season with 38. That would give Andersen 109 wins as a Maple Leaf at age 28. He’d need 193 more to pull even with the great Broda, whose No. 1 hangs in the rafters at Scotiabank Arena. That’d be doable if Andersen averaged even a modest 33 wins over the coming six seasons. If that doesn’t seem daunting, consider Broda made his Toronto debut in 1936, when the season ran 48 games. And consider ties. Before overtime and shootouts, Broda registered 102 of them. So like Price’s passing of Plante, Andersen besting Broda would require an asterisk. When you play for a club that’s been around more than 100 years, mind you, some would say setting any franchise record is worthy of an exclamation point, too.