Maple Leafs Downright Embarrassing on the Power Play and the Numbers are Worse Than You'd Expect
The Toronto Maple Leafs surprisingly own the NHL's worst power play conversion rate and the numbers are far worse than anyone could have predicted.
When the Leafs inked Marc Savard as an assistant coach this summer, relieving Guy Boucher of his duties as the assistant responsible for running the power play last season, everyone was anticipating a strong bounce-back performance with the man-advantage for the Leafs this year. However, as we are all well aware, the success just hasn't been there this season.
Savard ran a middle-of-the-pack power play in Calgary last season, which would have been a vast improvement with how the Leafs performed on the PP in the playoffs. However, not only is Savard's power play not in the top-20 this season, it's not even in the top-30. The Leafs currently own the league's worst power play success rate, firing at just 8.8% this season -- worse than the lowly Buffalo Sabres.
As you can see in the post above from Sportsnet's Luke Fox, the Leafs owned the 7th-best PP last season, prior to the start of the playoffs. Before that, the PP in Toronto was 2nd in the entire league, and back in 2021-22, the Buds topped the league in that category.
What's wild about this rapid drop-off is that it's literally the same personnel in Toronto, with John Tavares, Auston Matthews, Morgan Rielly, Mitch Marner and William Nylander on the top unit for much of this season, save the last couple of games this week, just as in years past.
There is plenty of time for the Leafs to right the ship here. With just 11 games played, there are 71 games remaining to get these inefficiency issues sorted out, and it all revolves around shooting the puck more, which seems like a very simple fix.
The Leafs are in St. Louis tonight to take on the Blues and this game would be as good a time as any for the Leafs to break out of their slump and convert at least once or twice on the man-advantage. If they can do that, perhaps they'll be able to gain the confidence they currently lack on the power play.
| POLL | ||
2 NOVEMBRE | 1921 ANSWERS Maple Leafs Downright Embarrassing on the Power Play and the Numbers are Worse Than You'd Expect Should the Leafs replace Marc Savard as the assistant in charge of the power play? | ||
| Yes | 1274 | 66.3 % |
| No, give it time | 647 | 33.7 % |
| List of polls | ||
