![]() It's the shortest longest winning streak for any team during the Matthews-Marner era, joining Detroit, Arizona and Ottawa. By Dave Feschuk Sports Columnist TORONTO STAR It has been an impressive run by any number of measuring sticks.
In winning six straight games, the Maple Leafs have outscored their opponents by a combined 20 goals. They’ve been the highest-scoring team in the NHL over that stretch, averaging just short of six goals a game. They’ve been among the best defensive teams, too, allowing a nightly average of 2.33 goals against. The previously unheralded Bobby McMann has solidified a spot in the line up by racking up seven goals along the way and that has helped ease fear that Toronto’s chronic lack of depth scoring might prove to be a fatal flaw. Auston Matthews has amassed a stunning 10 goals in the five most recent wins — a goal-scoring spree not seen in Leafland since Rick Vaive in 1983 — and that has only underlined the urgency of the situation. When you’re in possession of the greatest goal-scoring weapon on the planet, you’d be well advised not to squander the opportunity. The goaltending has been generally splendid, toning down any inkling to rush Joseph Woll back from injury. But maybe the most remarkable thing about Toronto’s six-game win streak is something else entirely: Since Matthews and Mitch Marner burst onto the scene in 2016-17, the Leafs have never had a more substantial one. This is it. This is the hottest of their hot streaks. Six straight wins is the most the Shanaplan Leafs have ever strung together. How does that stack up against the rest of the league? If you’re comparing longest win streaks, there isn't an NHL club that's had a shorter one over that span. Detroit, Arizona and Ottawa also claim six-game win streaks as their franchise high water marks since the beginning of 2016-17, according to Randy Robles of the Elias Sports Bureau. Detroit, Arizona and Ottawa have combined to make the playoffs twice in that time fame. Toronto, of course, can blow past that crowd with a seventh consecutive win on Saturday in Colorado, where they will conclude their four-game road trip against the Avalanche. And what will it mean if they do? Who knows? It’s not as though the length of one's longest win streak is some foolproof identifier of a great team. When all is said and done, they generally ask, “How many?” Not, “How many in a row?” Still, it’s long been a fact of NHL life that good teams tend to find a way to ride the wave of a hot streak to formidable effect, at least now and then. The Edmonton Oilers ran off a 16-game win streak earlier this season that left them one victory short of the NHL record held by the Mario Lemieux-led Pittsburgh Penguins. The New Jersey Devils ran off a 13-gamer last season. The Florida Panthers did the same the year before that. Heck, the Columbus Blue Jackets ran off a 16-game win streak in 2016-17. There have been 22 win streaks of 10 games or longer since Matthews and Marner broke into the league. The Lightning have three. Colorado has a couple. Boston has one. Anybody who has watched the Leafs probably has a theory about why they haven’t yet added themselves to that club. Start with a chronic lack of roster depth that puts too much responsibility on the backs of too few. Add in a well-earned, and not unrelated, reputation for inconsistency. Tack on a long-observed tendency to meet the first modicum of success with a satisfied sigh and the next night off. And there you have it: a team that finds a way to follow up the latest hottest stretch with a cryogenically frozen one. What we’re talking about here, of course, is mere history, no matter how recent. And there’s hope that what’s happening lately is proof there’s a divergent new chapter in the works, proof of a team suddenly and dependably showcasing new-found depth and 200-foot maturity at a moment when management is in the midst of making important pre-trade-deadline decisions. “We’ve been talking about consistency being the difference,” head coach Sheldon Keefe told reporters after Thursday’s 7-3 win in Las Vegas, explaining the key to this moment of prosperity. “We’ve played good hockey over the course of the season, but we haven’t put together a stretch like this. So that’s what’s been tremendous.” The consistency has come with a new-found emphasis on the collective, perhaps best exhibited in the 4-1 win over St. Louis on Feb. 13 that began the current win streak. In that game, with No. 1 defenceman Gorgan Rielly serving his first of a five-game suspension, and with Mitch Marner and John Tavares out with illness, McMann swooped in with an out-of-nowhere hat trick while Toronto’s commitment to a simple, defensively prudent style provided the blueprint the Leafs have been mostly following since. “We have everyone going right now,” said Max Domi, who scored two goals in Thursday’s win after supplying just one goal in the previous 15 games. “When you have everyone involved, and everyone’s playing and everyone’s taking short shifts and staying out of the box, those are the things that are winning hockey. And that’s what we’re doing right now. Everyone was good tonight. We had contributions from everyone.” That’s six “everyones,” if you’re counting. Whether Toronto’s depth players are performing better because they’ve finally been afforded more opportunity or whether they’ve being afforded more opportunity because they’re finally performing better probably depends on your opinion of Keefe’s line-shuffling acumen. The significance of the current win streak is in the eye of the beholder, too. Either it’s a grand-scheme blip or it’s an inspiring plot twist for a team newly determined to write something other than the same old story. How long it goes might determine which rings truest.
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