Toronto’s Defensive Situation

What went wrong in season 100?

Honestly? Not a whole lot. The defense was, by almost every metric middle of the road. Not awful, but not stellar. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the youthful offense, along with regular strong performances from Andersen was the main catalyst for the Leafs getting into the playoffs.

The following stats were mostly from puckalytics.com and are considering 5v5 until otherwise mentioned.

GF% of 51.1 put Toronto strongly mid table in scoring battles, but still in a playoff spot

PDO (Shooting + Save Percentage) of .6% over average would put them 8th in the east, but still in a playoff spot.

Team Corsi For/60 Team Corsi Against/60 Boston 60.19 Arizona 62.66 Los Angeles 59.90 NY Islanders 60.05 Toronto 59.51 Toronto 58.60

The stat that shows the ‘problem’ is Corsi, particularly Corsi For and Against per 60 mins. Looking at Corsi, effectively all shooting events, the leafs were THIRD BEST in the league For, with 59.5 shot events per 60 mins of play. With Corsi Against, which is the same stat for opponents, Toronto were THIRD WORST in the league, with a similarly high 58.6 shot events per hour. Average in the league is in the high 54s for each stat. What this means is that compared to the rest of the league, the shooting in Toronto’s games in considerably higher, for both teams. The only two teams with a higher CF/60 were Boston and LA; each had a CA/60 of under 50, meaning they were by far the best in the league for Shot Event Balance (CF%). The two worse than the Leafs in CA/60 were Arizona and the Islanders, who each had a CF/60 of below 55, and were 2 of the bottom 3 in CF%.

The defensive side of Toronto’s play was very prone to leaking even strength shots, that much cannot be denied. On PK however, the defensive play was very strong. They were divisional contenders in Penalty Kill Goals Allowed, and Save Percentage.

Looking now into the individual performances of the Maple Leafs Defencemen, and how the lines each performed. Zaitsev and Gardiner had the most ice time over the season, as the only two defencemen to play all 82 games. For more than half the season Zaitsev was paired with Rielly, so we’ll look into the stats as them being the top pair. By virtue of this it means the second and third pairings would be Carrick – Gardiner, and Polak – Hunwick, with Marincin and Marchenko filling the imaginary ‘relief’ pair. It wouldn’t be expected that the second or third pairing would be regularly going against the top offensive line that Toronto were playing against, and therefore the expectations of each pair is different.

Goals allowed, relative to the rest of the defensive corps, is a good way of seeing how effective each player was. I also added to add Save% relative to the team average, as that will show the quality of the shots that were allowed, while they were on the ice.

Name Pairing Relative GA/60 Relative Sv% Marchenko 4 -0.93 3.35 Polak 3 -0.89 2.90 Gardiner 2 -0.67 1.60 Hunwick 3 -0.51 0.81 Carrick 2 +0.02 -0.23 Marincin 4 +0.44 -0.92 Zaitsev 1 +0.70 -1.69 Rielly 1 +0.94 -2.41

Looking at this, it’s fair to say that Toronto’s first pair found life difficult, but that’s to be expected due to them regularly being up against the top lines of the other teams. Toronto are a team with large depth comparable to the league, and their long term signings of Reilly, Zaitsev and Gardiner are all young in the grand scheme of the NHL (23, 25 and 26 respectively). Both Polak and Hunwick are UFA this offseason, and it’s up in the air whether either will call Toronto their home in 2017-18. All three of them worked at a 30+ point pace this season, and are clearly still improving their game.

In the 11 games that Marchenko played, he outperformed the rest of the team, by some margin in 5v5 Save Percentage. The shots that were allowed when he was on ice were considerably more likely to be saved. His Defensive D play is clearly strong, and while he only got 2 points in that stretch of GP, seeing him next year as a staple of the Leafs D wouldn’t be a surprise.

If we suppose Polak and Hunwick don’t re-sign, a third pairing of Marchenko and Marincin seems fairly strong. We didn’t get to see them on the ice together in a game, but both of them posted good performances throughout the season. Marincin with Reilly posted ELITE defensive numbers, and with Zaitsev he had a CF% of 56%, making it one of the best offensive D pairs in the league.

If the Leafs gave these two additional ice time in the upcoming season, and used Marchenko on the PK, they could bring some serious game to the D pairs, and potentially pull the numbers up to bring Toronto in line with teams like Chicago and the Rangers, which could allow the powerhouse of an offense take Toronto to a second consecutive playoff run.