The Toronto Maple Leafs Learned How To Goalie. Uh Ohhhh
Mark Blinch. Getty Images.This current era of the Toronto Maple Leafs were originally constructed to be the greatest regular season team the league has ever seen. $50 million tied up in 4 offensive weapons. Another $7.5M going to an offensive defenseman. And then they'd just sign a bunch of beer leaguers to focus on stopping the other team. It was great because you could just set your watch to the inevitable playoff collapse once the games got tougher and the offense would disappear.
No defense. No goaltending. No toughness. No nothing.
The first thing they tried to address was the toughness. They'd bring in guys like Wayne Simmonds, Ryan Reaves, Tyler Bertuzzi and Max Domi to give them that edge you need to play with in the playoffs. But it's still hard to win hockey games when you're not keeping pucks out of your own net.
So this summer they went out and signed Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Chris Tanev to sure things up on the blueline. And more importantly, they went out and signed Stanley Cup Champion Anthony Stolarz to hop between the pipes. Sure, Stolarz is 30 and never really had a chance to be a #1 goalie so far. He's a bit of a journeyman at this point. But you spend enough time learning under Sergei Bobrovsky and you're bound to pick up a few things.
5 games so far this season, he hasn't given up more than 2 goals in any of them, and has a .938 sv%. It's still early but he's been one of the best goalies in the league through the first month of the season. I don't know how often that's ever been said about a Toronto Maple Leafs goalie.
All I'm saying is that if this team has found a goalie, then they're probably still going to collapse at some point in the playoffs. But it's going to happen way later than the first round.
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Sidenote: Still think Stolarz should have started off the night with a goalie fight after this move Vasilevskiy pulled during warmups.