Why there’s reason to believe the Maple Leafs’ putrid penalty kill will get better

Leafs fans, I’ll start with the good news: You don’t have to have an elite penalty kill to win a Stanley Cup. Last year we saw the Vegas Golden Knights hoist the Stanley Cup with a dismal kill rate of 71.7 per cent in the playoffs (beating the Florida Panthers, who finished with a 70.4 per cent playoff penalty kill), while the St. Louis Blues and Washington Capitals both won with PK percentages lower than Toronto’s current success rate of 76.3 per cent.

So yes, it is possible.

Still, let’s be clear: 76.3 is quite bad — 27^th in the NHL bad to be exact — and in most cases the Cup champs were able to kill penalties. Five of the past 10 winners were above 83 per cent, a number that would be top-five in this year’s regular season.

In grand conclusion, a good PK is better than a bad one, and the Leafs have a bad one that needs to be better.

In that regard, there’s hope.

First, we have established that some of the key penalty killers for the Leafs are capable of being above average at it. Two seasons ago the Leafs were eighth in the league with a PK at 82.1 per cent and their top two penalty killing forwards that year were David Kampf and Mitch Marner. The most PK ice time by a Leafs defenceman that season was TJ Brodie, and third was Morgan Rielly.

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Last season the Leafs were 12^th with a PK at 81.9 per cent, with the top killing forwards being, again, Kampf and Marner, with Calle Jarnkrok tied for third. Brodie was second to only Justin Holl in shorthanded ice time, and late addition Jake McCabe was immediately added to play just under two minutes per game on the PK.

The Maple Leafs today have a lot of the same horses who’ve had success. That said, they lost a lot of their secondary/depth PK guys, who they’ve been scrambling to replace. Holl and Mark Giordano ate piles of pucks for them, and neither will be a part of the Leafs’ Game 1 plans in this year’s playoffs. Jake Muzzin has long since gone as an option, and Luke Schenn came and went in a flash.

Up front, depth guys like Alex Kerfoot and Ilya Mikheyev and Pierre Engvall are gone, as are Ondrej Kase and Noel Acciari and Sam Lafferty.

But this is where I believe there’s room for optimism despite recent results.

Much of this season has essentially been a tryout for penalty kill roles, meaning we’ve seen William Nylander and Auston Matthews get some run. It’s good that they got that experience, but there’s a learning curve taking on any new assignment in the NHL. Bobby McMann has been getting an opportunity of late, Noah Gregor gets over a minute of PK time per game, and every defenceman with a pulse has been given a chance to take hold of a spot. You can’t be experienced without being given experience, and that’s what a lot of this season has been about for Toronto.

Brad Treliving recognized his team’s weakness moving towards the trade deadline and acquired a penalty killer in Ilya Lyubushkin, as well as Joel Edmundson and Connor Dewar, all of whom made some mistakes in their first few games on the PK that led to shots and goals against. Those early errors are only natural, as penalty killing is challenging and reading off new teammates’ tendencies (and where coaches want you to be aggressive) can make it doubly hard.

In that effort to improve, the Leafs acquired the aforementioned Lyubushkin at the end of February, with the other two names joining later in the month. But, by the numbers, it’s only gotten worse.

In the middle row of this table below – the month of March – you can see how miscommunication has led to more Grade A looks against, resulting in the worst expected goals against percentage in the league for the month (thanks to SportLogiq for this great info).

Now, on Tuesday against the Devils I thought Toronto’s penalty kill looked better, going two for two against New Jersey. And keep in mind what’s happened since they made these additions that led to these numbers. Lyubushkin missed about two weeks and was out of a rhythm, Marner has missed around three weeks, and it spans the time where Edmundson (now out himself) and Dewar have been sorting things out. Even Brodie was given a couple nights off as a scratch.

The Leafs haven’t been able to field consistent pairs up front or on defence.

It’s not impossible to see a world where the three new PK players come back, start to feel comfortable in their rotations, play more aggressively, and improve at least a bit. It’s not hard to see how having everyone healthy would allow the Leafs some stability, rather than a stream of PK tryouts. As much as those numbers above look abjectly awful, if Toronto’s top penalty killing defencemen include players who haven’t been here and haven’t been on the ice together, it doesn’t exactly tell us what their PK would look like with everyone healthy.

Given the success the Leafs’ top penalty killers have had in the past, you’d have to think it would improve some.

And if it improves some small amount – let’s say it keeps one or two more goals against out per week – suddenly you’re looking at a PK that’s closer to 80 per cent than 76 per cent, which is well in line with the penalty kills of teams that have been able to compete deep into the playoffs.

In the post-season, you almost always play against good power plays. Everybody is going to give up some PK goals. But if the Leafs’ power play can hold up its end of the bargain, there’s no reason why a healthy Leafs kill couldn’t get to the modest goal of being “average,” and allow them to have a combined special teams that are an advantage, rather than the opposite.

There’s no guarantee that health gets you there, but there’s enough reason to think the PK should be better over the weeks ahead, as the Leafs get closer to the playoffs.

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