The Toronto Maple Leafs failed at the trade deadline.
Not only did the Toronto Maple Leafs fail to improve their roster by this year’s trade deadline, despite having a great deal of flexibility built into their roster (all due to one-year contracts or expiring contracts); I chose to go down a very strange path with the team. what they did.
The Leafs are a below-average goaltenting team, one of the worst in the NHL.
They chose not to deal with either. The reason they’re doing what they are is because they have the best forwards in the league and are within striking distance of the top scoring team in the NHL. Achieving league average goaltending would make them a top team.
When they don’t…they’re brutal.
So it makes sense that they should have worked on it, since this is one of the few seasons of Auston Mathews’ prime, and Tavares and Rielly aren’t likely to be that good for very long.
They could have used $8 million to trade for an injured TJ Brody and a useless Ilya Samsonov, but they didn’t trade for any first-rounders or top prospects. Brad Treliving had the means, motive, and opportunity to make a big deal, but for reasons that are completely inexplicable, he chose to stand by.
One of the things he did was add some terrible defensemen to the team. As we previously saw in our review of the Ilya Lyubushkin trade, Lyubushkin has had a decent showing so far, but there are signs that he’s costing the team more than he’s contributing.
The same is true for Joel Edmundson, but to a greater extent. There’s no good way to say this. “The Leafs shouldn’t play him because he stinks.” (All statistics nauralstattrick.com).
Please keep this in mind before you begin. Joel Edmundson so far he has played only 7 games. His sample size is very small. Furthermore, of the statistics we will consider, the least valuable as predictive indicators are pro-goals and anti-goals.
This is because objectives are the rarest of statistics and it takes a long time to build up a sample size. Goals are heavily influenced by the goalkeeper’s performance, but in the long run (counterintuitively) they have little to do with defensive play. So just because a player is getting minutes doesn’t mean he’s playing well.
Edmundson has a 98% save percentage on the ice so far, but this skews his numbers. The greatest defensive player of all time played at his absolute peak and could do nothing to achieve a 98% save percentage at any given time. So we have to ignore the fact that the Leafs are getting Edmundson playing time so far. Other statistics suggest that this situation will never occur again.
The Leafs are 6-1 when Edmundson plays. If I thought that would continue, I would sing his praises as the biggest factor in the Leafs’ future playoff berth.
But that statistic doesn’t mean much.
When he plays, the Leafs actually get killed. They routinely get trapped in their own zone, as evidenced by the fact that when Edmundson plays, shot attempts favor opponents 103 to his 125. This equates to a 45% puck possession rate, which is completely guaranteed to him 100% of the time. A 6-1 record suggests it won’t last long.
Although the shots are even, the scoring chances are 55% to 45%, giving the opponent a huge advantage. The Leafs’ overall expected goals rate when Edmundson plays is 45% of his.
This is a very bad number.
And those numbers roughly matched what Edmundson posted to Washington, which ultimately lost minutes too. In fact, the only time in his career that a team earned playing time over a full season was when he had a goaltending percentage of over 92%, something he had no control over, and the Leafs’ goaltending percentage was over 92%. I can’t bet on whether the keeper will be successful or not. Any amount.
The facts are indisputable. Joel Edmundson is a mean and difficult player to play against. But it’s not so hard that the team wins when he plays. He is one of the least effective and worst players in the NHL.
His trade was misguided and completely unwise. The Toronto Maple Leafs are a badly managed team that has no idea what they’re doing, and the sooner this front office gets cleaned up, the better for all of us.
The Leafs only paid a third and a fifth, which was way too high. So far, the results have been good (he won limited playing time and then got injured and couldn’t play), but it won’t last long. Numbers don’t lie. This was a bad deal, but it worked out as expected.