Leafs 7-3-1. Been there four times before.

A 7-3-1 record to begin a season is definitely nice for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but it certainly is far too early to say that record guarantees an overall good season. Indeed, with 36 goals for and 35 allowed, the Leafs may very well come back to earth soon. Over their history, Toronto has in fact started with the exact same 7-3-1 record on four other occaisons. A look at how those seasons turned out:

1999/00
Led by Curtis Joseph in net, this year's 7-3-1 start featured 32 goals for and only 22 allowed. They sat first in the NHL. They would continue the hot start ending the calendar year at 23-9-4 and finished the season with 100 points, first place in the Northeast Division. Toronto would lose 4 games to 2 in the New Jersey Devils in the second round of the playoffs.

1988/89
This season's 7-3-1 start included 45 goals for and 32 against and placed them first overall in the NHL. They would win the 12th game before hitting the skids big time. From then until Boxing Day they sputtered along at 4-20-1 costing coach John Brophy his job. Toronto finished with 62 points, third last overall in the NHL.

1961/62
This year's fast start of 33 goals and 24 against was parlayed into an overall fine season. 7-3-1 put them in second place on Nov.7, one point behind Montreal. They finished the season 37-22-11, solidly in second place and 13 behind the Habs. Leafs would beat the New York Rangers in the semis 4 games to 2 and Chicago in 6 games to win the Cup.

1952/53
This season's 7-3-1 start was perhaps the most similar to the current season's. 59 years ago they had scored 37 goals and surrendered 35, very close to today's numbers. They were in a tie for first in the league. Within three weeks they had fallen to under .500 and finished 27-30-13, 2 points out of a playoff spot.

So, two of the four times that Toronto started a season with this record, they failed to make the playoffs.

Another interesting way to look at this year's start is looking at all the season's in which Toronto had at least 15 points over the first 11 games. 15 different times Toronto has done this, from the 7-3-1 starts up to the 10-1-0 start of 1993/94. The average final winning percentage of those 15 seasons was .573. If they do that this year, that's 94 points...maybe just enough to make the playoffs. Maybe.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Team Canada 1972, What Might have Been

Image
Guy Lafleur, if he had played in the 72 Summit Series "No way. Can you imagine what our fans would say if we allowed Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito to play for Canada in that series and either...suffered an injury that might prevent them from playing with us for a year or more?" This was the concern of Weston Adams Jr, president of the Boston Bruins as quoted on April 20, 1972. After being speculated and discussed since February 1972 at the Olympics in Sapporo Japan, the series was set to go. Early on however, controversy stirred as to who exactly would be representing Canada. Bruins GM, Milt Schmidt agreed with his boss saying, "My only interest would be to see the Russians play the Bruins for the world championship...or whatever team wins the Stanley Cup." In the Vancouver Sun a few days later, the legendary Jim Coleman responds to the American naysayers suggesting that Team Canada should be made up strictly of players from Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal
Read more

WHA Ottawa Civics, The Two Week Franchise

Image
Tom Earl, Daryl Maggs, Mark Lomenda, Gary MacGregor, Garry Swain "Please let the fans make up their own minds," Henry Feller told a press gathering. "Let them decide if they want pro hockey here. We have to average 7,000 or 8,000 in the remaining 19 home games for a break-even point." Feller was a director of the Founders Club who had interest in buying the WHA's Denver Spurs club. Ivan Mullinex, owner of the Spurs had brought his team to Ottawa in an attempt to drum up interest and save his investment. The date was January 2, 1976 and Mullinex was in debt to a Denver bank to the tune of $1 million dollars. This same day, the newly christened Civics lost their first game under the new moniker by a score of 2-1 at Cincinnati. Star of the team, Ralph Backstrom said after the game, "Our first official notice of the move hit us when we entered the Cincinnati rink and the names on the big scoreboard read: Stingers and Civics. Until that moment we were un
Read more

Denman Arena, Vancouver - "The Pile"

Image
Situated at the corner of Denman and Georgia Streets in Vancouver, sitting on the shore of Coal Harbour, the Denman Arena was once the largest in the world. Built in 1911 by Frank and Lester Patrick at a cost of $300,000 it was the main venue for their newly formed Pacific Coast Hockey Association. Until the Montreal Forum was built in 1926, it was the largest artificial ice arena in the world seating 10,500. Constructed of wood and brick, the large brick facing led Vancouverites to refer to it as The Pile. The Patrick brothers simultaneously built the 3,500 seat Patrick Arena in Victoria to help house their three team league which also included New Westminster. They would proceed to raid the established National Hockey Association of much of it’s top talent to stock their teams. The Pile would host the Vancouver Millionaires Stanley Cup championship in March, 1915, boxing matches featuring Max Baer and “Cinderella Man” James Braddock, movie star Rudolph Valentino as well as bicycle r
Read more