TORONTO — With the Florida Panthers suffering a surprising Thursday night loss to the Chicago Blackhawks, the Toronto Maple Leafs can say they’re properly in first place in the Atlantic Division in November for the first time since 2021. It’s not a spot they’ve held often, or when they have, for long.
The quirk about the whole “in first place” thing is, the Leafs aren’t actually any better than they’ve typically been at this point of the season. As the jokes go, November has always been the time to shine for the Core Four. But this year, struggles around the division have left the door open to parlay that early success into better playoff positioning.
Here’s a look at this Leafs season compared to the few prior, on this same date (Nov. 22):
|
Season |
GP |
PTS |
PTS% |
PLACE (by %) |
PTS to 1st |
|
2024-25 |
20 |
26 |
0.650 |
1st |
+1 |
|
2023-24 |
17 |
22 |
0.647 |
3rd |
-9 |
|
2022-23 |
20 |
25 |
0.625 |
2nd |
-9 |
|
2021-22 |
20 |
27 |
0.675 |
3rd |
-2 |
In late November 2021, they briefly held top spot until the Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning caught up in games played. Two months later, in late January, they’d be 10 points back and behind two teams, never much of a threat to win the division. (They finished second, back by seven points, drawing — and losing to — Tampa Bay in Round 1.)
You can see how emphatically a team has pulled away with the division the past two years. The running joke (or more accurately, the running lament) on Real Kyper and Bourne was that we knew exactly where the Leafs were going to finish in the standings the past two years by American Thanksgiving, and we legitimately did.
Not the exact spot, but we knew they’d be the 2/3 seed in the Atlantic series, and so it felt like a bit of a death march to the inevitable. It made the stakes for each game feel insignificant.
If the Leafs collect points the rest of the way at a .500 winning percentage, they’d end with 92 points. Last season, the final wild-card team was the Washington Capitals, who collected 91. With that in mind, I think it’s fair to say the Leafs are all but officially going to be a playoff team (save for a calamitous amount of injuries).
The focus remains clear: Winning the division. The second wild-card spot is currently held by the Boston Bruins, who are .500 after just firing their coach. There are eight teams below the Bruins, and all eight are within one-to-two wins of catching them, save for the Montreal Canadiens, who are just five points back with two games in hand.
Drawing a team of THAT calibre, instead of one of Florida or Tampa Bay, would certainly improve the Leafs’ chances of seeing more than the first round. (The first wild card is likely to be a team like the Capitals, if I had to guess.)
The challenge will be that the Leafs have to find the “Craig Berube” version of their game without many significant lulls. And, generally, there are some growing pains as teams adapt to a new style, but 20 games in and it looks like the Leafs might already have a pretty good grip on what the playoff version of their game is going to look like. If they’ve avoided pilling up losses and have in fact already cleared that hurdle, they’ll find themselves in a great spot.
I wrote about how the Leafs are in fact different — their defence is better, while their offence is less voluminous but more patient — and that idea was elaborated on by Anthony Petrielli of Maple Leafs Hot Stove.
One of Petrielli’s points that stands out, as the Leafs prepare to cross the season’s quarter mark, is this quote from Sheldon Keefe last year: “When teams play the Leafs, they set up the game for the Leafs to beat themselves.”
And hasn’t that been the vibe in past years? The year they lost to Montreal in the playoffs stands out in particular, where they were dominant, but their opponent just hung around and waited for breakdowns before cashing them in.
In two recent games (against Washington and Edmonton), the Leafs trailed and remained patient rather than opening the game up, then were essentially gifted their way back into both hockey games. The Caps’ Tom Wilson handed them one on a breakout, and the Oilers’ Evan Bouchard did the same three days later. In both cases, the Leafs took advantage of those opportunities and carried on strong from there.
What a concept, right? To trail in a game, yet not flip the switch to full-on pond hockey.
SportLogiq tracks “turnover chances,” which are scoring chances that come within five seconds of an opponent’s turnover. The Leafs have been elite-elite at creating these for years, with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner being two of the league’s most prolific pickpockets.
Last year, the Leafs led the entire NHL in turnover chances, and they’ve not taken a massive step back there:
2023-23: 4.20 (1st)
2024-25: 3.95 (3rd)
That difference can partially be explained simply by the fact Matthews, who is an absolute cat burglar when hunting the puck, has missed seven of the team’s 20 games (and wasn’t 100 per cent in some of the others). If he were in, you could comfortably throw another handful on the pile.
But by not taking chances, they’ve avoided turning one-goal deficits into bigger holes. Here’s where they’ve ranked in turnover chances against per game in each of the past two seasons:
2023-24: 3.84 (31st)
2024-25: 2.90 (6th)
By the stats, this Leafs team is more focused on being low-event and using its skill to capitalize when chances come. Toronto is not giving games away, but instead acting as the patient, mature team that can wait.
By style, it’s happening via more dump-outs and dump-ins, and fewer shots but of higher quality.
By vibes, it’s forming a belief in a coach and a system that can work, even when six of the team’s most commonly used 12 forwards are unavailable due to injury. I’ll admit that, as a viewer, it’s sometimes less thrilling, and even frustrating, when watching them chase games. But when you see it work out a few times, you can see a viable post-season strategy there.
All told, the Leafs are in the best position they’ve been in since the North Division year to have post-season success. As that year showed, nothing is guaranteed. But their best odds of pushing for a deeper playoff run come with getting quality seeding.
Their place in the standings and performance on the ice have shown that the path to getting there is direct. One might even say the path is north-south.
