Leafs on verge of ending eight-year playo drought
But the Oilers’ dry spell will likely continue
TORONTO — The Toronto Maple Leafs are going to make the playoffs. This may seem like an obvious statement, but it has become an extremely unusual sentence to type in this day and age, like writing that newspapers are making galactic profits, or that the Internet is a nice babysitter for the kids.
The Leafs making the playoffs used to be a pretty normal occurrence. It was a different time.
But it’s going to happen for the first time since 2003-04, when they had five guys on the roster who have since been put in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
The site sportsclubstats.com has the Leafs at 99.8 per cent to get in, with a 73 per cent shot at fifth in the Eastern Conference and an 18 per cent chance at sixth, which is probably better.
Either way, with nine games left and 48 points in the bank, the odds are overwhelmingly good.
“Oh, wow,” says defenceman Mike Kostka, grinning, when told of the 99.8 per cent figure. “Stats don’t lie, right?”
Well, there is a slim chance that this will not happen, just as there is a slim chance we are not all here and are, in fact, the dream of some interstellar dolphin or something.
But in the reality we are currently experiencing, the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to make the playoffs.
Kostka says they don’t talk about it either way — what it would be like to get in, or what it would be like to miss out — and can’t afford to think about it. For them, there are still nine games to go.
“During the season, I didn’t look (at the standings) all that often, but now that we’re coming down to it, I’ll probably check it just to see where teams around us are and who we have coming up,” says Ben Scrivens, the backup goaltender. “I’ll say I’m on top of it, but I’m not working out all the game theories and figured out that we need this number of wins, or anything like that. I haven’t done the math. You make predictions, but even the best-laid plans, right?”
Yes, the best-laid plans. The Leafs need three wins, probably, and there has been zero sign that a sufficiently monumental collapse is coming.
Coach Randy Carlyle won’t get into the playoff picture yet, but admits he looks at the standings and wonders who they might face in the first round if it came to that, in the ragged mess that is the injuryplagued Eastern Conference.
Carlyle is all about the here and now, but he lets the idea flitter around.
“Oh, for sure,” Carlyle says. “We’re not studying it, that it might be life or death with this team or that team. We’re going into an area where we’re trying to continue to earn the respect back for our hockey club. That’s the one thing we’ve tried to do.
“People made predictions at the beginning of the year of what we were going to be and we’re not going to do this and we’re not going to do that. We’re just trying to live what we are.”
What they are may be deceiving, in its own way. For instance, here’s a quick diversion regarding those percentages: SB Nation’s Montreal Canadiens blog, Eyes On The Prize, made a chart of the past five years grouped by Fenwick Close, which measures — take a deep breath — shots attempted at even strength, while the score is within one goal or tied in the first two periods, not counting shots that are blocked. Basically, it measures an important type of puck possession.
Of the six teams in the past five years whose Fenwick Close was below 45 per cent — meaning that for every 100 shots attempted in those situations, they had fewer than 45 — none made the playoffs.
Of the 70 teams that finished between 45-50 per cent, 22 made the playoffs — and one won a Stanley Cup. (The 200809 Pittsburgh Penguins, who were at 49.97 per cent).
And of the 66 teams ranked between 50-55 per cent, 50 made the playoffs and two won Cups.
And of the teams at 55 per cent or above, all eight made the playoffs and two won Cups.
The Leafs are currently ranked 28th in the NHL in Fenwick Close, at 46.7 per cent (the last teams with worse numbers to make it were last year’s Nashville Predators and Carlyle’s 2010-11 Anaheim Ducks, at 45.66 per cent. HMM).
But Toronto’s save percentage is 10th, the penalty kill is third and the shooting percentage at even strength is tops in the whole NHL. Over 82 games, it might fall apart. Over 48?
No, the Leafs will make the playoffs for the first time since Facebook was made available to the public.
So yes, much to the consternation of plenty of Canadians — Scrivens, an Alberta boy who was 17 the last time the Leafs got in, diplomatically posits that “there’s a certain amount of animosity against all Easterners” — Toronto’s long hockey nightmare is at least temporarily over. They will pass the NHL’s longest post-season drought baton over to the Edmonton Oilers, whose playoff chances have been pegged at 9.4 per cent. Like Rob Ford, the Leafs are outlasting any mistakes.
The mayor dropped by the locker-room after the Rangers win Monday, actually leading goaltender James Reimer to say, “I never met him before, but heard a lot of good things.” Let’s not all buy Reimer gift subscriptions to the Toronto Star at once, people. One should suffice.
But you can actually say lots of good things about the Leafs for the first time in what feels like forever.
They are not a disaster, as far as the standings are concerned. They are going to give their fans games to live and die with, rather than just reasons to eat their own livers. They are going to play Montreal or Boston, probably, and either one would provide the kind of tribal hatred Toronto hasn’t experienced since savagely beating Ottawa in the first round in 2004. They are going to reach the finish line in April and play in May.
And Leafs fans will be happy.
Some will be unbearable, as if Andy Dufresne had concluded The Shawshank Redemption by gloating about it to everybody he met.
Some will just walk around with a giddy, confused look on their face. Some eight-yearolds will never forget it. It’s a strange thing, a strange time. But it’s pretty much here.