Ever since Mike Babcock got Maple Leaf fans pondering the P-word last week — “We’d like to be in the playoff hunt after 20 games,” was his frenzy-inducing phrasing — it’s been an intriguing point of debate.

Is this talk of the post-season actually reasonable or wholly delusional?

As the Maple Leafs prepared for back-to-back games Tuesday and Wednesday against Carolina and New Jersey that will take them to the 20-game mark, which their coach has set as an important checkpoint, it was worth taking stock of the kind of team the Maple Leafs have been through their opening 18 outings.

They have proven they can put the puck in the other team’s net, for one thing. Even with prized rookie centreman Auston Matthews in the midst of a 12-game goal-less streak, Toronto’s depth of young talent — including a septet of Calder-eligible skaters responsible for 62 points, some 35% of the team’s output — has seen the Leafs take a huge jump in the NHL’s offensive rankings. A season ago they were the third-lowest-scoring team in the league. Heading into Sunday’s games, they were the third-highest. Last year they scored 198 goals. This year they’re on pace for about 260.

That’s made for some exciting viewing. But all the highlight-reel fireworks have been occasionally blunted by a grim counter-truth: The Leafs haven’t been very good at keeping the puck out of their own net. Heading into Sunday, only three teams were allowing opponents to score more goals per game.

So it’s a good-news, bad-news scenario so far, a top-three offence attached to a bottom-four defence. And here’s the worst news: The history of the league suggests such combinations don’t often earn berths into the Stanley Cup tournament.

There are, mind you, at least a couple of ways to succeed playing a goal-trading, defence-optional style. Employing Mario Lemieux in his prime works fine. For two straight seasons in the early 1990s, the Lemieux-led Penguins piled a near-peerless ability to score goals atop a regular-season defence that was fourth-worst and third-worst in the league. Such was the enormity of that team’s talents that it still won back-to-back Stanley Cups. But there was more than one asterisk attached. In the spring of 1991, to name one, the Pittsburgh defence was buoyed by trade-deadline additions of Ron Francis, the great two-way centreman, and Ulf Samuelsson, the physically imposing defenceman. They also had Paul Coffey among their stash of Hall of Famers.

Another historically proven way to overcome a bottom-five defence: Wayne Gretzky. The 1992-93 L.A. Kings, the team that spoiled Toronto’s best chance to make the Stanley Cup final since 1967, was another of history’s volume-scoring, defence-challenged success stories. But again — Gretzky.

In other words, overcoming a dregs-of-the-league defence to make the playoffs, let alone play in a final, isn’t often achieved by mere mortals. The last team to make the post-season while ranking in the bottom five in goals allowed was the 2007-08 Ottawa Senators, according to research by Randy Robles of the Elias Sports Bureau. There was plenty to like about that team. They’d been to the Stanley Cup final the season before. They set an NHL record for the fastest start in league history, winning 13 of their first 14 games. They led the league in scoring, so long as you count actual goals and not the ones awarded to shootout winners.

But their defensive game was relatively abysmal. And what became of their high-powered regular-season offence? It produced a combined five goals in a four-game first-round sweep by the Penguins.

There have been Maple Leaf-esque teams with top-notch scoring and bottom-of-the-barrel defence in more recent memory. The 2014-15 Dallas Stars finished second in goals for and fourth-worst in goals allowed. They couldn’t overcome the second-worst goaltending in the league as measured by team save percentage, so their 92 points in the standings left them shy of a playoff berth. The 2012-13 Tampa Bay Lightning scored a lot and gave up a lot — and finished third-last in the league standings in that lockout-shortened campaign.

All of this is to say that the Maple Leafs, if they’re serious about hanging around in the playoff hunt, will need to improve their defensive results, pronto. And there’s plenty to suggest they’re making solid progress in that direction. A lot of it comes down to goaltending. And while Frederik Andersen’s overall numbers haven’t been particularly impressive — his .908 save percentage is well below the league average — his recent work has been distinctly more convincing. Consider his month-over-month goals-against average. In October it was a dismal 3.67. In November, so far, it’s 2.61. A goalie more than a goal better amounts to a season-changing difference.

But even stellar netminding might not be able to overcome the thinness of Toronto’s defensive corps. Which is why Babcock has been emphasizing the importance of stylistic discipline. The coach wants to see less of Toronto’s offence coming off the rush and more from the less-risky cycle game. He wants less open-ice chance-trading and more tight-space, offensive-zone dominating. That kind of approach can take a lot of pressure off a group of blueliners that lack the solidity of a bona fide No. 1. And the message seems to be slowly sinking in.

“We have a lot of skill and a lot of guys that can score off the rush. But we don’t have to score off the rush every time. We don’t want to play that turn-and-burn style of game,” said Connor Brown, the rookie winger. “We want to really control the game, play in their end, wear teams down. We’re getting there. I think we’re moving in the right direction.”

It’s never easy: Expending more energy on the game’s harder arts can seriously cut into a team’s goal-getting prowess. What we do know is that internal expectations have increased. Witness Babcock’s disappointment in Saturday’s 2-1 loss in Montreal, where the Maple Leafs, after a slow start, outshot the Canadiens but fell short to Carey Price et al.

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“I expected us to come here and win . . . I just think there’s more to give,” Babcock said. “It’s a harder game in the National Hockey League and you’ve got to dig in.”

Whether enough Maple Leafs are ready to grab a shovel will go a long way toward determining if the team can lay the foundation for a playoff conversation that endures into the long winter ahead.

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