How do the Maple Leafs measure up to recent NHL Stanley Cup winners?

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Eight games remain in the 2024-25 season. Eight games to go, and the Toronto Maple Leafs are on the verge of clinching a playoff spot, sitting atop the division with the sixth-best record in the NHL.

It’s funny, though: It hasn’t always felt like that kind of a season, has it? There have been so many highs and lows in Toronto and so many playoff disappointments in recent years that things don’t feel all that triumphant as we head down the stretch and into the postseason.

This is a roster that still has a lot of questions to answer. It’s also a team that has been divisive among the fan base, pundits and even coaches and execs from other teams around the league.

Despite their strong record, the Leafs have weak points that their critics point to. They’re middling in goals against. They’re not much better than average in goal differential. And they don’t kill penalties well or control play at even strength.

Some of their key strengths, meanwhile, are similar to other Leafs teams of this era. They can score, thanks to their four stars up front and some newfound goals from Matthew Knies and Bobby McMann, and the power play has heated up as the season has gone on.

You add in better goaltending and, at times, net-front play than they’re used to, and there are reasons for optimism, regardless of who they’ll face in Round 1.

But what does it all add up to? Does Toronto profile like a potential Stanley Cup contender, based on these pros and cons? Is it destined for another quick exit, or is there the potential for this team to finally do something more?

With the defending champion Florida Panthers in town for a big game Wednesday, it’s a good time to try to answer those questions. I’ve fired up the ol’ Mirtle McCharty Generator and inputted some regular-season data from the eight most recent Cup winners in key categories.

Let’s go through some of the comparisons, one by one, and see where the Leafs fit in.

Next to points percentage — which correlates the most to winning the Cup among all the stats in this post — a high goal differential is the most commonly shared attribute among recent champs.

The average Cup winner played at a 109-point pace during the season — above the Leafs’ current 104-point pace — and put up a goal differential of roughly 0.60 goals per game.

Their average rank in those metrics? Fifth in points percentage and sixth in goal differential.

The Leafs have produced offense as good as (or maybe even slightly better than) these other eight teams. They’ve allowed 8 percent more goals against, however, and a handful of these eight Cup winners really kept goals against down during the season. That brings the Leafs’ goal differential notably lower than many teams that won.

It’s interesting to see, however, that the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals teams that won it all were not that airtight in the GAA department in the seasons in which they pulled it off.

Nothing earth-shattering in there, but it’s a decent look at how Toronto measures up in some broad categories.

In the playoffs, the Maple Leafs will need Anthony Stolarz to play like he has all season. (Nick Turchiaro / Imagn Images)

Maybe this shouldn’t register as a surprise, but none of the teams that won recently had average (or below) goaltending during the regular season. Most clubs were comfortably in the top 10 in even-strength save percentage, and last season’s Panthers were elite, thanks to a tandem of Sergei Bobrovsky and Anthony Stolarz (who posted an impressive .925 save percentage last year).

Having a good save percentage appears to be a better indicator, at least in our sample size, of going on a Cup run than things like a strong goals against, power play, penalty kill or even expected goals share.

That makes some sense because you’re not going on a 25-game grind to the finals without getting a lot of saves. And though it feels like goalies sometimes come out of nowhere to lead their teams to a championship, the typical trend of late is that these teams have received strong goaltending — or at least above average — all season.

The Leafs fit into that category, given the play of Stolarz and Joseph Woll, especially if you consider their rank here (fifth) is pulled down by eight bad games of Dennis Hildeby and Matt Murray filling in when the top two were injured.

As for special teams, most teams that have won were good on the power play. The Leafs have a higher power-play percentage (26.2 percent) than any of the most recent eight teams that won, so consider that one of their biggest separators in this grouping.

And though the Leafs’ PK has not been good, that’s true of a lot of Cup winners. The average team in our sample of eight champs ranks 13th while short-handed, which is basically average (around 80 percent).

So that might not be the fatal flaw that it seems, assuming the Leafs’ PK doesn’t dip further against better teams in the postseason, as we’ve seen. Having Chris Tanev and Brandon Carlo should help there.

The last of our charts gets into the Leafs’ biggest weakness.

Coach Craig Berube hasn’t been trying to get his team to play a possession style, and it certainly shows, as the Leafs are below average in the NHL at everything listed here. (Even controlling the share of high-danger chances at even strength, which has been a focus for the coaching staff and was a strength early on in the season.)

The concern here for Toronto is that a lot of the league’s best teams are pretty good at this, and if you get into a tight series with them, you might be playing a ton of it in your own end.

Plus, the Leafs’ underlying metrics, like expected goals and high-danger chances, have gone in the wrong direction throughout the season.

If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that teams have won without being Corsi dynamos. The Vegas Golden Knights were relatively average the year they won, although it’s worth noting that a bunch of that was because they had injuries to key players such as Mark Stone, Shea Theodore and Jack Eichel, all of whom played almost every game in the playoffs that year.

Then there’s the Capitals, who were downright bad in all of these metrics in the 2017-18 season. Heck, they finished dead last in high-danger chance share at even strength, which is remarkable.

They weren’t really a possession team, but they improved at controlling play and scoring chances in the playoffs, flipping the switch to get on the right side of those numbers over an impressive playoff run.

For the Leafs to win it all, that is the recent championship team to which they profile the most closely. The Capitals were strong offensively (a league-best 3.58 goals per game that postseason), good on the power play (an impressive 29.3 percent) and had good goaltending from Braden Holtby (a .922 save percentage) when it mattered most.

If you combine that with slightly better than average puck possession and expected goals share at even strength, you’ll do pretty well.

The main keys for the Leafs compared to previous postseasons are that they need more from their big scorers in key games and with the man advantage. They need Stolarz and Woll to play like they have all season. And they need to tighten up defensively and territorially from some of their tougher stretches over the past few months.

They’ve had stretches when that looks possible. It just hasn’t come consistently.

The Leafs won’t be able to go deep playing the way the Tampa Bay Lightning or Panthers did, using overwhelming fundamentals to wholly control games, because that hasn’t been their game all season. But there’s a path there to try to win another way, even if it’s arguably a lower-percentage one.

There are a lot of ways to win in this league once you get into the postseason. The margins are slim, and puck luck plays a key role. It’ll be interesting to see if taking a different tack from previous seasons — when the Leafs were typically far more of a possession team — pays off for Toronto.

It worked for the Capitals, another team that ran back a bunch of its core for a long time before finally breaking through.

(Top photo: Nick Turchiaro / Imagn Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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