If the Maple Leafs play to this identity, can they have playoff success?

It’s rare that you get to see an experiment play out in professional sports quite like we’re getting with the Toronto Maple Leafs. For years, their biggest detractors have said they couldn't win playing the way they chose to play. They were too fancy, they held on to the puck too much, and that style won’t work in the playoffs.

And, it hasn’t.

Their advocates have claimed this style would break through eventually, that the roster is not built to play any other way, and that with just a little better goaltending and/or special teams they would finally get results. Just knock on the door long enough, a la Washington or St. Louis, and your year will finally come.

Well, after enough tries at “breaking through,” the traditionalists got their wish with the Leafs' roster and Craig Berube, who immediately began the season by asking the team to play a much simpler, predictable style of hockey. 

If we’re being honest, though, Sheldon Keefe had agreed with those traditionalists for a while about Toronto's need to play more north/south, evidenced by their “dump in rate” each season. Keefe took over in 2019-20, and here is Toronto's dump in rate by season since then. For ranking order, Sportlogiq considers the lowest dump-in rate as first.

The Maple Leafs dump it in more often now than they ever have before. 

I bring this up on the heels of a week where I did this video for AWS and the NHL on “Ice Tilt,” which shows that the Leafs rank in the bottom third of the league in Tilt (24^th, to be precise). Typically, the puck is in their own end more than their opposition's.

So I wanted to ask the question: can you win like this? “Ice Tilt” itself is a fairly new stat that uses player tracking (just started last year), so we can’t track if teams that were poor at tilting the ice have had much of a history of winning the Stanley Cup (Florida finished third-best last season). 

Here’s last season's tilt rankings, if you’re interested:

The Leafs have taken a step back here, perhaps somewhat willingly.

The question I had about the Leafs was: “have any recent Cup champions not relied on possession?” Their identity right now reminds me of the Barry Trotz NY Islanders teams that went to back-to-back conference finals in 2020 and 2021. 

Those teams were fine with giving up shots: combining those two seasons, they were 29^th in the NHL in shot attempts percentage. Yet they were seventh in high danger attempt percentage, simply by protecting the house as a priority. You can shoot, you just can’t shoot from in here. 

The Leafs are 26^th in shot attempt percentage, 16^th in high danger attempt percentage, and ninth in high danger goals percentage. 

We may not be able to look at historic Ice Tilt numbers, but we can check out possession numbers. Here’s a look at this year’s Leafs by possession time -- O-zone and total -- and a look at the regular seasons of the eventual Cup champions going back 10 years.

Rather shockingly, the Leafs exactly mirror, to the second, the “worst” team on the list: the 2017 Pittsburgh Penguins. (So you’re tellin’ me there’s a chance, etc., etc.)

Almost every other team -- at least the last six winners -- have a better ranking in the offensive zone than total. That feels to me like teams who are good at breaking the puck out, and hanging on to it when it gets to the right part of the ice.

I think it’s notable that there are a chunk of years where Colorado, Tampa Bay and – gasp – Craig Berube’s St. Louis team(!) dominated possession. But the past two seasons have been won by less possession-heavy teams that have found other ways to do it. 

And so I wondered, did those past two champs focus on being just dump-in teams since their possession is lower? Is hockey rewarding purely the dump and chase and bangers these days?

Not exactly. In fact, there’s not much of a pattern at all.

Florida dumped it in a ton, but Vegas operated in an entirely differently way. What struck me when trying to determine if the style Toronto currently plays with has worked before, was how different the Florida and Vegas teams were. That should start making the overall point here clearer: There is not some “Cup-winning archetype” aside from “be really good and play your chosen archetype well.” 

Florida dumped it in constantly and rarely carried the puck, while Vegas carried it far more regularly. I thought this might translate into Toronto being a Florida-like team, but check out blocked shots, something the Leafs do exceedingly well. 

It’s not really a part of what Florida does, but darn sure part of Vegas' game plan.

Your stance on blocking shots might depend on what your goalies prefer, and this is obviously a huge piece of what goes in to making a Cup contender. Most teams we’re looking at here had a combined team save percentage that was 10th or better in the NHL, save for St. Louis (13^th) and Washington (17^th), who both got good goaltending in the playoffs when it mattered most. The Leafs' combined team save percentage is ninth in the league this season (at .900), but if you strip away the starts from Dennis Hildeby and Matt Murray, their two starters have combined for a .912 save percentage, which would be second-best in the league.

I’ve also looked at hits, as last year’s Panthers led the NHL in hits-per-game. But I don’t think that’s a part of the Leafs' identity either. Last year they were second to only those Panthers in hits, and this season they’ve dropped to ninth. It doesn’t seem to be much a part of who they truly are, and there’s not much of a pattern between hitting and winning that I can see.

So after looking at all those numbers, I have a few takeaways about what they mean for the Leafs. Can they win being a low possession team that keeps the puck outside and is purely opportunistic?

1. First things first: it isn’t gonna be a ton of fun to watch if you’re a nervous fan. There will be a lot of D-zone, nail-biting time.

2. I’m not sure that Toronto's roster is built to succeed the way it’s being asked to play. Florida can have a lot of success doing the dump and grind thing, as they seem to have hyper competitive guys who default to that style even on their off-nights. Can the Leafs muster it up often enough to get through two months of playoff hockey? It’s certainly possible, but it’s a big ask.

3. I think the adjustment to this style has been more of a challenge than most assume. The growing pains have been real. Is it possible they'll get comfortable in it at the right time of year, and hit their stride?

4. The other piece of that is, Toronto's poor possession numbers are probably related to a few things, one being the adjustment they've had to make, and the other being a very strange season from Auston Matthews, who suddenly (mostly) looks like himself again. If he begins to play like he has in the past – a Hart Trophy contender – then all their team numbers will be on the rise at the right time.

5. They’ve never really had goaltending like this, which should be a real piece of optimism. You can play any style you want if you get stops.

The fact is you can win in any number of ways. You don’t have to be a dump-in team, or a shot-blocking team. You can be a possession team, you can get from A to Stanley C in a variety of ways. The point is, whatever it is you’re doing, there has to be full buy-in and execution of the coach's plan, and that has to be a true identity. 

Of late, the Leafs seem to be finding something like that, and showing signs of willingness. Down the stretch, that’s what fans should be looking for – a team that’s all-in on one way of playing, and frustrating opponents doing it. There will be a big ask of their goalies in the post-season, which should be great incentive to get wins down the stretch, take the division, and hope a softer round one opponent gives the Leafs a greater chance at advancing to the second round.