5 reasons why Toronto Maple Leafs will win Stanley Cup
By Riley Butler
With the NHL playoffs starting next week, let’s look at the five reasons why the Toronto Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup this year.
With the Toronto Maple Leafs’ 4-2 win over Montreal on Saturday, Mike Babcock and crew ended their 2017-18 regular season campaign. The Leafs ended the season with a final record of 49-26-7 with 105 points. This performance was good enough to secure them the third divisional playoff spot in the Atlantic behind the Boston Bruins and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
All in all, this placing doesn’t do justice to the level of success that Mike Babcock, Brendan Shanahan and Lou Lamoriello have achieved this year. The Leafs will end the regular season in sixth place in the league and they have broken multiple franchise records this season including most points in a season (team), most wins in a season, most wins by a goalie in a season and many more.
The Leafs have been good all season long and it isn’t a fluke. They aren’t the same team that scraped into a wild card last year but pushed the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Capitals to six games with five overtimes and every game being a one-goal game….
They’re better than that team.
With all that said, lets break down why the Toronto Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup this year.
5. Special Teams
The Leafs have enjoyed a a very high level of proficiency across both sides of their special teams. They have been quite successful since last season as Babcock has been able to use his youth core to help create a well-rounded special teams squad.
Their penalty kill is quite deep and boasts a very respectable 81.4 percent for the season. This puts them in a three-way tie for eighth in the league with the Knights and the Rangers. The emergence of quality penalty killers in Zach Hyman, Kasperi Kapanen and Conor Brown has allowed Babcock to utilize his veteran penalty killers like Leo Komarov, Roman Polak and Ron Hainsey by giving them quality penalty kill minutes with proper partners.
No one has seen this more than 38-year-old Ron Hainsey, who was acquired by the Leafs in the offseason. Hainsey is now a season removed from winning the Cup with the Penguins last year but has excelled for the Leafs. Hainsey plays more shorthanded minutes than anybody in the league, and it’s not even close. His play with Morgan Reilly this year has helped drive the Maple Leafs’ penalty kill and the defence as a whole.
As for the power play, the Leafs have the second best power play in the league with a 25 percent conversion rate. This is only behind the Pittsburgh Penguins, who have a 26.2 percent conversion rate. The Leafs’ first power play unit all season has been driven by the play of Mitch Marner and with his resurgence since February, the power play has also surged. Marner led the team in points this season with 69 and many of those came on the power play with consistent success with linemates Nazem Kadri and James van Reimsdyk.
Their success is even more astounding when seeing that the Leafs were third last in the league in power play opportunities (224), a stark contrast to the Penguins who have 36 more opportunities and sit eighth in the league