If you watch the Leafs regularly, you may notice that they seem to let in lots of goals early in games. This may just seem to be the case since I’m a Leafs fan used to disappointment, but decided to check it out. Here are the results I found of the Leafs’ play in the first 5 minutes of the game:

Season save % 0.909 Season shooting % 10.14 First 5 mins save % 0.880 First 5 mins shooting % 4.80

So, its clear that the Leafs’ goalies aren’t as sharp in the first 5 minutes as the rest of the game. The same can be said for the Leafs’ shooters, who seem to have no luck at the beginning of the game.

One decent stat for the Leafs is that they have only been outshot in the first 5 minutes in 19 of their 46 games, so perhaps these bad numbers aren’t the result of not trying. It would be nice to compare these numbers to those of other teams around the league, but given my brute force method of number crunching, I just dont have the time.

Suffice to say that the Leafs could significantly improve by being tighter at the start of games, especially in a league where the getting the first goal often leads to winning.