Leafs’ power play currently ranks last in the NHL

Dose
Crédit: BOSTON, MA - MAY 04: Toronto look on after Game 7 of the Eastern Conference First Round playoffs between the Boston Bruins and the Toronto Maple Leafs on May 4, 2024, at TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Fred Kfoury III/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

The Toronto Maple Leafs are off to a rather ordinary start to the season. With thirteen points in twelve games (6-5-1), the Leafs look more like a team in the mix than a Stanley Cup contender.

One of the reasons for Toronto’s slow start is their poor performance on the powerplay, with a success rate of just 7.9%, good for last place in the League. That’s just three goals in thirty-eight chances!

As James Mirtle says, it’s hard to believe the power play is that bad this year. And since this post, that number has dropped from 8.3% to 7.9% as the Leafs were zero for four with the man advantage in a 4-2 loss to the Blues in St. Louis.

The problem is, it’s costing the Toronto outfit dearly to have a powerplay that languishes in the bottom half of the League. The Leafs’ four star forwards – Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner and John Tavares – cost the team over $46 million in salary, or 53.1% of the payroll.

Add in the $7.5 million salary of power-play defenseman Morgan Rielly, and that’s a lot of pussies on the ice not scoring.

The team has also offered a contract to former Canadiens captain Max Pacioretty to give even more ammunition to a power play that finished seventh in the League last season with a 24% rate.

For several seasons, the Leafs’ power play has been at the heart of the team’s success, and one wonders whether the problems at the start of this season can be attributed to the arrival of new coach Craig Berube and his assistants. And if these setbacks continue, could they end up affecting the team’s overall performance?

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However, if the powerplay is struggling, the Leafs are doing quite well on the disadvantage, with 83.3% efficiency for eighth place in the NHL. The team also has the fourth-best five-on-five goal output with plus-ten.

So you’d think that with a better power-play performance, the team would have a better record than thirteen points in twelve games. That still puts them third in the Atlantic Conference, but only four points ahead of the Canadiens, who currently occupy last place.

Well, the campaign is still young, and all it takes is one good night for the Leafs’ power play to unblock, but in the meantime, the team is losing more games than it should.

Overtime

– Good day for our skaters.

– Great game from Jackson and Henry!

– Bills win over section rivals.

– Burrow on fire!

– And the other NFL games.

This content was created with the help of AI.