[TBiz]

Maple Leafs Regular Season | News Wire | 2017-2018
Leafs stick to whats working:
[March.2.2017]
Many Trades were made at the deadline this year, but one notable team decided that they've got what they need and are sticking to what they have. That team being the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Leafs are pretty much secured to be in the playoffs this season to defend their last years amazing Stanley Cup Victory to end the longest drought (Last Cup was 1967) in the NHL. The major parties of that Stanley Cup Victory are still on the roster and they look to repeat this season.

Leafs yet again at the start of the season weren't predicted to be "the team" to watch and weren't even considered a darkhorse of a team. Last season they proved the league wrong and the way they've played all season with key players going down for periods of time, they'll be trying to do it again.

Auston Matthews is the Leafs lead assist/points man. He's ranked (11) in assists in the entire league and (14) in the NHL with points.

Toffoli's the teams top goal scorer and hes only ranked (38) in the NHL.

With their top players not even breaking the Top 10 in either stat some may be worried, but the real deal is that all the Leafs have contributed to this season. They've got 4 players in total with 20 or more goals (Toffoli, Marner, Skinner, Matthews) another 6 players with 10 or more (Richards, Rielly, Griffith, Nylander, Martinez, Ristolainen). Also not Mike Richards has been out quite awhile and he's almost averaged a point a game when he was active (GP:33, G:13, A:14).

The Goalies are the true sign of this team. Namely Frederik Andersen who actually hit the rankings hard in the NHL. These stats obviously can be contributed to the team in front of him as he's had help. Andersen's rankings show:

Tied for 1st in wins (36) | Fleury (36) | Crawford (35)
1st for Goals Against Average (1.70) | Jones (2.10) | Lehner (2.14)
Tied for 1st for Save Percentage (.922) | Holtby (.922) | Talbot (9.19)
3rd in Shutouts (7) | Quick (8) | Vasilevskiy (8)

The fun fact here is Andersen has split alot of time with Murray and Bibeau that hes only ranked 24 for most games played this season (45) but leads the League in wins. 13 other Goalies have player 50 or more in the 62 season games played so far.

All and All. The Leafs have come far from their drought to now and look to be a playoff contending team for the years to come.



Season | Notable Around The NHL | 2017-2018
Deadline Trades
St. Louis Trade G: Jake Allen to New York Islanders for LW: Andrew Ladd

Washington send rights to G: Konstantin Volkov and RD: Matt Niskanen to Columbus for LD: Jack Johnson & Rights to G: Adam Scheel

Edmonton trade RD: Adam Larsson to Winnipeg for LD: Brenden Dillon

Los Angeles trade their top goal scorer RW: Jeff Carter and 5th Rd Pick in 2018 to Montreal for LW: Jacob de la Rose and C: Phillip Danault

Edmonton trades LW: Ilya Kovalchuk to the New York Islanders for rights to C: Ryan Poehling

Florida sends LW: Jon Marchessault to Nashville for LD: Johan Alm