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The Toronto Maple Leafs are wrapping up October with a record of 6-5-2, good enough for third place in the Atlantic Division.
One of the most impressive wins in the Leafs’ first month of the season came on Oct. 28 against the now 11-1-0 Winnipeg Jets.
About the team’s performance, head coach Craig Berube said in a press conference following their game against the Jets that he believed the team “played the right way the whole game” emphasizing how good the team’s performance was even strength.
Still, Berube said that they need to improve their play on the power-play and in limiting penalties if they want to compete.
One of the team’s biggest issues so far has been their power-play success. They rank 31 out of 32 NHL teams in power-play percentage (PP%), which measures the number of power-play goals divided by the number of power-play opportunities, according to ESPN.
The Leafs’ 10.0 PP% ranks them just ahead of the Buffalo Sabres, a team tied for the fewest points in the Eastern Conference; and far-off the best power-play team in the Winning Jets at 44.1 PP%, according to ESPN.
Last season, the Leafs ranked 7th in PP% at 24.0 per cent, per ESPN.
“There’s not a directness to it. We’re not getting pucks to the net enough…There’s not a shot mentality on the power-play right now and it’s execution,” said Berube in Leafs’ Media Availability on Saturday.
Berube has shifted around their top power-play unit as a result. John Tavares, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, Matthew Knies and Auston Matthews featured on power-play line one; Max Domi, Bobby McMann, Max Pacioretty, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Morgan Reilly on line two in Saturday’s 2-1 overtime loss against the Minnesota Wild.
The Leafs’ goalies were another point of concern coming into the season with expected starting goalie Joseph Woll injured at the start of the year. But so far the team’s depth, in Anthony Stolarz and Dennis Hildeby, have held up, according to Berube.
The Leafs opened November taking on the St. Louis Blues, an important game for Leafs’ goalie Joseph Woll, who grew up in Missouri.
“There’s a lot of memories sprinkled in with the guys I grew up with,” Woll said in Leafs Media Availability before the game on Friday. “[My mom] will probably be a bit of a nervous wreck.”
In that game, only Woll’s third start of the season, he gave up three goals on 23 shots in the 4-2 loss.
The game also marked Berube’s first game against his former team in St. Louis, the team he won a Stanley Cup with in the 2018-19 season.
“Got a lot of people I became really close with there…for me it’s a special place because of the people,” Berube said in Leafs’ Media Availability on Friday.
The team will return home on Nov. 5 to take on the division rival Boston Bruins.
As the Leafs’ season moves into its second month, the team has played around 20 per cent of its games so far. There will be a lot more time to evaluate the team’s play before it is clear how successful they will be.
A journalist at On The Record.
