The Season Ahead

David Shoalts almost wrote a solid article today. I'm not normally his biggest fan, so I was surprised to read a few quality comments from him, and the meaty quotations he was able to get from MLSE upper management were fantastic. The article was actually quite good until the final couple of paragraphs, reproduced below:

"After 13 games, the Leafs are 5-5-3 with 13 of a possible 26 points.
A .500 record will not be good enough to make the Eastern Conference playoffs. And to get the 93 points that probably would be good enough for postseason qualification, the Leafs will have to win 40 of their remaining 69 games, a .580 pace that looks daunting given their league-high 52 goals against."

Shoalts' assessment is partially correct - a .500 record isn't good enough to make the playoffs, and the 8th place qualifier will likely need about 93 points to make the playoffs. The 8th place Eastern Conference team both last year and the year previous (since 'The New NHL"came about) had 92 points. So, Shoalts isn't far off.

However, that means that the Leafs will need 80 more points, NOT 40 more wins. There is a difference. In theory, the team must only win 11 more games, lose 58 in overtime and qualify for the playoffs with 93 points. Overtime / shootout losses are key

I don't think that asking the team to win, say, 35 more games and pick up 10 more points via overtime and shootout losses is unreasonable - it's only a .507 pace. Last year the league-wide range of points gained through overtime losses was between 5 and 16. The year before it was 4 and 15. So, the Leafs simply need to fall smack in the middle of the range (they're pretty average at everything else, why not this?) to hit the target.

A 35-24-10 record isn't out of the question at all, and only a meathead would argue otherwise.