Vibes, not stats, are driving Maple Leafs hot streak

All good things, right? The Toronto Maple Leafs‘ 8-0-2 run might be over, and somewhat predictably with the second half of a back-to-back but it’s worth taking a look at how things went so right and if it is a sustainable path to the playoffs.

If the Maple Leafs were going to be a playoff team this season they needed a hot streak to undo a rough first half of the season. The post Marc Savard firing 8-0-2 streak meant that as of the morning of January 14th, fans can look at the standings and see Toronto sitting in a playoff spot. Mission accomplished.

What is interesting is how the sausage was made. The Maple Leafs have had a 103.8 PDO over that stretch. There has been strong goaltending over that time but most notably it’s the 12.5% shooting percentage has made them particularly lucky. What is interesting is that the Leafs have the fourth-lowest Corsi for percentage (CF%), 7th lowest shots-for percentage, 10th lowest expected goals for percentage (xG%), and 6th lowest high danger Corsi (HDCF%) in the league at 5-on-5 during this time. These numbers are very much in line with what the Leafs have put up throughout the first half of the year and are typically numbers that equate to a team missing the playoffs or relying on a PDO heater to carry them as far as they can go. Essentially, this is Randy Carlyle hockey.

Those 5v5 numbers oversimplify things a little bit and special teams tell an important story as well. The Maple Leafs have a 31.2 power play conversion rate over those ten games, good enough for 4th best in the league over that time, and a 91.7% kill rate when shorthanded, which has been the best in the league since December 23rd. The penalty kill has climbed to being the third best in the league this season and after having a powerplay that was dead last in the NHL, the Leafs are now 24th in the league, which is still not great but is one heck of a dead cat bounce.

If the numbers don’t make sense at a team level, they start to on a player by player bias. For one, William Nylander has a 55.56% shooting percentage and 10 points in the four games he’s played. Auston Matthews has been the team’s leading scorer with 14 points in nine games, and eight of those points are goals. Matthew Knies has a 25% shooting percentage and nine points, John Tavares has nine points, and with the big dogs barking, Nick Robertson, Max Domi, Bobby McMann, Matias Maccelli, and Nicolas Roy have all seen their games elevate as well. And, while the Leafs might still be getting out-chanced at 5-on-5 or at best are trading chances at 5-on-5, the opportunity to win games via special teams takes advantage of the fact that chances from Matthews are worth more than chances from most players around the league, and creates an encouraging trade off for the Maple Leafs. It’s perhaps the only way that the numbers make sense.

The thing is players aren’t numbers, they are people, and vibes matter. This team did receive a wakeup call with the firing of Marc Savard. This team has had to come to terms with the fact that Matthews was under delivering to start the year and William Nylander had hit a rough patch before Christmas. Things weren’t working on special teams and the fact that Steve Sullivan gave the team the opportunity to try something new was taken the right way and embraced by the team who have run with the restart in the best possible way.

Does that mean that people shouldn’t be concerned about the Leafs?

Absolutely not. Peak performances from the top part of the depth chart will only go on for so long and the Leafs have six other teams within two points of them in the wild card race, three of which have a game in hand over the Leafs. The fact that 18 points in 10 games was required to get Toronto back to the playoff bubble shows how bad the first 35 games went this season and a dip in that direction or even having the rest of the bubble outplaying the Leafs could still result in an unfortunate ending to the 2025-26 season.

For now, the team is embracing vibes. They are catching breaks, which is a rarity for the Leafs, and they are finding confidence. If some of that sticks beyond this ten game stretch, the Leafs might overachieve compared to their numbers.