Maple Leafs Road Trip: Why Five of Eight Points Is the Bar Out West

The Maple Leafs road trip starts tonight

The Maple Leafs road trip through Western Canada and Seattle starts tonight in Edmonton, and it arrives at the right time for a team that has finally found some footing. Toronto is 6-4-2 after three straight wins over San Jose, Columbus and the New York Rangers. It sits fourth in the Atlantic Division with 14 points through 12 games, according to standings through Oct. 23.

The bad news is everything else. The Leafs head west without John Tavares, without Chris Tanev in the lineup, and with three defencemen on injured reserve after Nick Blankenburg and Marshall Rifai joined Tanev on Oct. 23. Toronto recalled Cole McWard and Dakota Mermis from the Marlies to fill the gaps.

Four games in eight days, all on the road, with a patched blue line. Here is what the trip looks like, where the Leafs stand going in, and what a passing grade looks like.

The four-game schedule

The trip runs from Oct. 24 to Oct. 31, with a day off between each of the first three games and two days before the finale in Vancouver.

There are no back-to-backs, which matters with a goalie rotation built around Sergei Bobrovsky and Anthony Stolarz. Jim Hiller can ride the hot hand without forcing a second-night start, and the Leafs will not need to carry a third goalie the way they did earlier in October.

Where the Leafs sit in the Atlantic

The division is bunched. Here is the Atlantic through Oct. 23, with points percentage calculated from games played.

The column that matters is games played. Toronto has played more games than anyone else in the division, so its fourth-place spot flatters it slightly. By points percentage, Montreal is ahead. Tampa Bay, Montreal, Detroit and Buffalo all have two games in hand on the Leafs.

The Bruins are the early leaders at 8-2-1. Tampa Bay (7-3-0) and Ottawa (7-4-0) are level with Toronto on points, and Ottawa already owns a head-to-head win, the 3-2 game on Oct. 3 when Toronto hit six posts. Florida, without Aleksander Barkov, is treading water. Track it nightly on our NHL standings page.

The 84-game math

This is the first NHL season with an 84-game schedule since 1993-94, which changes the arithmetic a little. At 14 points through 12 games, the Leafs are on pace for 98 points. That is a playoff number in most seasons, but not a comfortable one in an 84-game year, when the cut line will rise with the extra two games.

The goal for the trip is not to change the pace dramatically. It is to make sure the three-game streak is not a blip. Before this streak, Toronto lost three straight from Oct. 13 to Oct. 17, ending with the 4-1 loss to the Islanders that we covered in our Islanders recap. A western trip with an injured roster is exactly where that kind of slide can start again.

The obvious problem: McDavid first

Edmonton is 8-1-1 and has lost once in regulation. Connor McDavid leads the NHL with 31 points in 10 games, eight goals and 23 assists, and sits 10 points clear of teammate Leon Draisaitl in second. Mike Babcock, the former Leafs coach, is behind the Oilers' bench and gets last change at home.

The Oilers have their own injury issue: defenceman Mattias Ekholm left the Oct. 22 win over Carolina after hitting his head on the ice, and Babcock suggested he could miss time. That takes some of the bite off Edmonton's back end, but not off McDavid. Our Maple Leafs vs Oilers preview has the full matchup breakdown.

Auston Matthews arrives with eight goals and 18 points, the fifth-highest total in the league entering the weekend, per NHL.com. He has been the Leafs' best player since his return, and he needs to win his minutes against McDavid's line, because Toronto's defence cannot be expected to.

Calgary, Seattle and Vancouver: the swing games

The last three games are the ones that decide whether this trip is a success. Calgary, Seattle and Vancouver all finished well out of the playoffs last season: the Flames went 34-39-9, the Kraken 34-37-11 and the Canucks 25-49-8. None of them is a team a healthy Leafs roster should fear.

But the Leafs are not healthy, and road games against teams playing with nothing to lose are where depth gets exposed. Toronto's bottom six has carried more weight since Tavares went down. Nick Paul has moved up the lineup, and the fourth line won the Rangers game, as we detailed in our Rangers recap. That has to continue for another week.

The Vancouver game on Oct. 31 has one more wrinkle. It is the earliest Blankenburg could return under the seven-day injured reserve minimum. If Tanev, who travelled with the team and has been skating on his own, also gets cleared by then, the Leafs could finish the trip with a far more normal defence than they start it with.

Our take: five of eight points is the bar

LeafsLurker's line for this trip is five points out of eight. That means a win and an overtime loss in the two Alberta games, or a loss in Edmonton followed by wins in at least two of the other three. It is a reasonable target for a team missing its top shutdown defenceman and a top-six centre, and it would put Toronto at 19 points through 16 games, a 100-point pace over 84.

Anything less, especially a loss to one of the three non-playoff teams from last season, should push John Chayka harder toward a trade for a right-shot defenceman. We have argued that since the Tanev injury, and every depth call-up makes the case stronger. A good trip buys Chayka time to find the right deal. A bad one takes the choice away from him.

Anything more, such as a win in Edmonton plus a sweep of the other three, would be the best evidence yet that Hiller's team is more than the sum of its injury report. Matthews and William Nylander are healthy and producing, Kirill Marchenko has fit in on the second line, and Gavin McKenna is getting real minutes. The talent is there to go 4-0. The blue line is the reason nobody should expect it.

What's next

Puck drop in Edmonton is 7 p.m. ET tonight. After Vancouver, the Leafs return home, and a Nov. 8 home date with the New Jersey Devils could bring an early look at newly acquired Connor Hellebuyck. Follow the rest of the roster on our Leafs players page.

If Toronto is still in the top three of the Atlantic when it lands back in Toronto, this trip will have done its job.