What Can We Expect From The Leafs' Players This Year?

How exactly did this happen? Oh right, the ASG was in Montreal.

PDO is a beautiful thing. While not perfect, it gives us insight on who we can expect to have a bounce back season, or who we can expect to fall back to earth.

If you want to make a couple bucks by the end of the season, do this: find one of your stupider buddies that doesn't read this blog (hint: should be easy to find) and bet him that 1) Ryan Getzlaf will have a bounce back season and 2) Erik Karlsson will see a regression on his point totals. Both of these players had an outlier season in terms of On Ice SV% and On Ice SH% (what determines a players' PDO), likely affecting each players' point totals.

Anyways, this is a Leafs focused blog so follow me over the jump to see what we can expect from the good guys this year.

March to the Playoffs

February was a tough month for the Maple Leafs, it saw: the Leafs fall into 12th place in the Eastern conference, Torontonians break swearing records and our media-friendly coach Ron Wilson get fired. Ron Wilson was on his way to becoming one of very few coaches to lead a team into four straight years of early golfing and ridicule when Brian Burke decided that the Toronto Maple Leafs would be Wilson free for March and onward.

Do the Leafs really, really need a "number one" centre?

Photo cred: Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press

Apparently the Toronto Maple Leafs are in desperate need of a "humongous big number one" centre - per every single person that gets paid a good amount of money to talk about them. I'm going to go ahead a disagree with that. While it is true that the Leafs need to get stronger up front, as they get pushed around like a bunch of Timbits when they play a strong team, i.e the Boston Bruins. Getting bigger and tougher shouldn't be the most pressing need in the organization, it should be preventing goals against.

Advanced Statistics: for dummies! PDO

Advanced stats in hockey are not to be taken as law or gospel, but they can help confirm or deny what you're eyes see while you watch. Advanced stats are very helpful because they help us see things that our brain might not be recognising, for instance, many Leafs fans thought that Keith Aulie was Jesus on skates last year, meanwhile advanced stats tell us he was more like the water that Moses easily parted. This is not a post about Keith Aulie, but a series of posts explaining in layman's terms what advanced stats are, and why they are helpful.

Why Bobby Ryan shouldn't be a Maple Leaf

Amid the Maple Leafs fan base collective drooling over the prospect of Bobby Ryan becoming a Leaf in the next few days, I'm going to throw caution into the wind and say, I don't want him.