Toronto Maple Leafs playoff history, by the numbers

The Leafs have a long and storied post-season history. Here’s a deep dive into the stats.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are back in the NHL playoffs. In the first round, they’re matching up with the Tampa Bay Lightning, a team that’s appeared in three straight Stanley Cup finals and won two of them.

But that’s the least of their worries (or, you know, just one of the worries). When it comes to the Leafs and the playoffs, it’s never just about the team in front of them.

In fact, it’s awful common to read the phrase “weight of history” when perusing stories from past Leafs’ playoff runs and previews of big games.

This history includes the incredibly high bar the team set in its early years, and the championship drought that came after. Very little of it should be on the shoulders of the current roster, but sports aren’t always fair.

To get a fuller picture of the Leafs’ playoff story — good and bad — we took a deep dive into the game logs and record books. Here’s what we found.

13

Stanley Cups won

It’s oft repeated these days that the Leafs haven’t won the Cup since the NHL started expanding in 1967, but let’s also remember to dwell on the good times.

The team won 13 Cups between 1918 (when they were briefly known as the Arenas) and 1967. That’s better than one championship every four years during that stretch, which is all the more impressive because it included not one but two 10-year title droughts — between 1922 and 1932, and then again between 1932 and 1942.

Of course, the period that followed that last drought was one of the most dominant in league history, with the Leafs winning five Cups in seven years between 1945 and 1951.

What’s more, their total number of Cups still has them second on the all-time list, all these years later. Here’s the top five:

.619

Stanley Cup Final win percentage

Kind of an addendum to the last one. The Leafs haven’t made as many appearances as the Red Wings, and they’ve made about the same number as the Bruins, but they’ve done more with their opportunities.

The team’s .619 Cup final win percentage ranks seventh all time:

At the top of the chart there, the Avalanche are three for three, winning most recently last season versus the Lightning.

73

Post-seasons made

The 2022–23 season marks the Maple Leafs’ 73rd post-season.

This berth is also the seventh straight for the team, which ties them with the Bruins for longest active streak in the league. It’s a run they’ve matched only three other times in their history. Their longest streak was 15 years between 1930–31 and 1944–45.

On the flip side, their longest drought was seven seasons between 2003–04 and 2012–13.

570

Post-season games played

The Leafs have played 570 playoff games in their history. Amazingly, almost exactly half of those games were played leading up to the 1967 Stanley Cup, and half after.

That said, if you break it down even further into games played during the four distinct NHL eras, a clearer picture emerges:

It’s hardly big news, but the era immediately after expansion was bleak, with an average of only about four playoff games per year. Relative to that, the modern era that started in 1992 has been downright sunny, with more consistent appearances and a higher win percentage.

The sum total of all those games is 58 individual series wins. The last was in the first round of the 2004 playoffs versus the Ottawa Senators.

9

Most Maple Leafs goals in a single playoff game

The most goals the Maple Leafs ever scored in a playoff game was nine, in Game 5 of the infamous 1942 Stanley Cup Final versus the Red Wings. It’s infamous because the Leafs came back from a 3–0 hole in the series, becoming one of just four NHL teams to ever accomplish that feat — and the only one to do it in the final.

Six Leafs lit the lamp that night, with Don Metz netting a hat trick and Syl Apps scoring two.

34

Most playoff goals by a Maple Leaf

This record belongs to Wendel Clark. Captain Crunch did most of this damage in long runs in the 1992–93 and 1994–95 playoffs, but he scored five or more goals in four different post-seasons.

Here’s a look at the all-time top five:

Among active players, Auston Matthews leads with 17. This ties him for 16th on the all-time leaderboard with the likes of Doug Gilmour, Busher Jackson, and Red Kelly. William Nylander is next with 13 (tied for 29th all time.)

75

Most shots faced in a single game

Full disclosure: We wrestled with which goalie stat to include here.

Scoring trends over time make save percentage and goals against average pretty misleading. We considered goals saved above average, but that pointed as much to longevity as success (not exactly a shocker: Johnny Bower came out way ahead!).

So we’re going with the craziest stat in the book: The time Ed Belfour faced 75 shots in a single game versus the Flyers in the first round 2003.

The game went into three overtime periods, and Belfour gave up just three goals in 113:54. Sadly, his team scored only two, and the game ended in a loss. For what it’s worth: The series ended in a loss, too, in seven games.

Also notable: Belfour’s counterpart for the Flyers, Roman Čechmánek, played the entire game, too, but faced just 38 shots.

Here’s the team’s all-time leaderboard:

Parting note: Only three goalies have faced more shots in a single playoff game than Belfour did here.

Columbus Blue Jackets goalie Jonas Korpisalo is the all-time playoffs leader in this regard, facing 88 shots and saving 85 in over 150 minutes of ice time in a game in 2022. His team gave him only two goals as well, and they lost … to Tampa Bay.

0

Stanley Cup Final appearances since 1967

Well, we said “good and bad,” right? Here’s a look at the Cup final appearances and wins since 1967 for Canadian teams:

As much as people (non-Leafs fans especially) point to the lack of recent Cup wins, it’s the lack of final appearances that’s the truly spooky stat.

Granted, recent days haven’t been super kind to Canadian teams in general as not one has claimed the Stanley Cup since 1993. But only the Leafs and the Winnipeg Jets — who started play in Atlanta in 1999 — haven’t made at least one final since the start of the expansion era.

In any case, the team is currently sitting on a 54-season final drought — the longest in the league by over a decade.

The Leafs have come painfully close, of course. No fan will forget the missed Wayne Gretzky high stick that helped the L.A. Kings get a Game 6 win in the 1993 conference finals. Toronto lost that series in seven, then lost to the Canucks in the conference finals the next year.

The team lost at the same stage in 1999 and 2002, and hasn’t been back to that precipice since.

But, hey, maybe this’ll be the year.

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