Top Line Stats

Sorry for missing out on the Montreal-Toronto game last night - that's a confrontation I'm not eager to miss. It's a rivalry that's lived far longer than the one between Ottawa and Toronto, and it has certainly not mellowed with age.

Speaking of which, the Ottawa-Toronto rivalry is one that has died down quite a bit in recent years. I presume it's due to the fact that the rivalry there reached its previous fever pitch due to Ottawa's unfortunate tendency to lose to Toronto in the playoffs, but it's been a few years since the Leafs were even in the playoffs. To be specific, the last time those two teams tussled in the postseason was in... 2004 (The Leafs won 4-3 in the first round, by the way).

But I digress.

The point of this post is actually to mention something I saw about the Leafs top line forwards. Over at HockeyAnalysis, they were discussing the performance of the top line of the Maple Leafs, and comparing them against some other teams that are doing particularly well at the moment. They did the number crunching, I just decided to put it in an attractive graphic format:

Click the image to expand it.

Interesting development, eh? For comparison, look at their stats for the eleven games previous to the trade deadline. I am aware that these players were not playing together on the same line - Kulemin was relegated to third line duty, Stajan and the others hadn't been traded yet - so the stats do not really correspond with each other. Still, it's intriguing to see the differences.

Click the image to expand it.

Clearly, Kulemin has been the one to benefit the most from the change in circumstances. While previously he was in line to score fewer points this season than last, he's already broken into unknown territory and likely to get even further ahead. Meanwhile, Bozak has increased his production by 66% and Kessel has actually lost ground, strangely enough.

For reference, Kulemin's career year (and rookie season) was a 15G16A31P performance. He's now at 32 points, with ten games left in the season and going a point-per-game pace - if you choose to ignore the rest of the season beyond the last eleven games.

Which I will choose to do for the purposes of this discussion. Massaging statistics is an interesting way to spend time.