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With the re-signing of John-Michael Liles the Leafs now have an abundance of defensemen signed under control for a number of years, many with big dollar contracts too.  We all have our varying opinions on the relative values of each of these defensemen but I thought it would be an appropriate time to take a [...]

Whenever I get into a statistical debate over which player might be better than another the inevitable argument that comes up is “yeah, but player A plays against tougher competition and gets tougher assignments” which is a valid argument to make.  But how valid?  The other day I looked at a simple, straight forward method [...]

One of the biggest omissions in my player rankings is making adjustments for zone start differences.  We know that Manny Malhotra has a significant bias towards starting his shifts in the defensive zone and that his teammates Daniel and Henrik Sedin have a significant bias towards starting their shifts in the offensive zone.  The result is Malhotra [...]

Brian Burke joined the Leafs in November of 2008.  When he joined the Leafs he insisted he has no interest in a 5 year rebuild and expected he could make the team competitive much sooner.  Let’s evaluate how Burke has done in his tenure as GM of the Maple Leafs. 2007-08 2011-12 GAA 3.08 (27th) [...]

Not sure what led me to look into this but I took a look at poor defensive teams making the playoffs in the eastern conference.  Over the past 3 seasons there have been just 6 teams to make the playoffs in the eastern conference with goals against averages greater than 2.80.  They are: Tampa Bay [...]

There has been a lot of talk over the last 24 hours about the possibility of the Maple Leafs trading Luke Schenn to the Philadelphia Flyers for James van Riemsdyk?  Personally, I’d seriously consider it and probably do it, but lets take a look at the numbers. Luke Schenn HARO+ HARD+ FenHARO+ FenHARD+ Ozone% 2011-12 [...]

There is a post over at Backhand Shelf today that lists 10 backup goalies that have out performed their #1 counterparts.  It is an interesting read but it may be a perfect example of how simple statistics don’t tell the whole story. The first pair of goalies on the list are the Bruins Tukka Rask [...]

So we found out over Christmas that Ron Wilson got his wish and got a new contract.  With that the onus of blame for any failures this Leaf team has now clearly falls on Brian Burke’s shoulders.  Specifically, I am talking about the Leafs horrid penalty kill. Ron Wilson was one of, if not the, [...]

This will be the final part of my unplanned 3-part series on who is good and who is not on the current Leafs team.  The first was about the penalty kill and the second was defensively.  Today we look at the players offensively. The Defensemen Player Name GFA FenF20 Ozone% DION PHANEUF 2.4 15.22 60.2% [...]

Yesterday I took a look at the Leafs players on the PK to see who has seen good result and who has seen bad results when they have been on the ice.  Today I do the same thing but look at 5v5 situations from the defensive side of things to see if there is any [...]