The Maple Leafs and Panthers have played the same amount of games but the power-play gap remains not

The Maple Leafs and Panthers have played the same amount of games but the power-play gap remains not

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Although the Maple Leafs and Panthers have played 41 games each this season, there’s a clear discrepancy between who gets favors from the officials each night.

If you were to take one thing that the Toronto Maple Leafs tend to do more than anyone else in the league is take penalties. Often given the short end of the stick, if they aren’t perfect it’ll lead to some eventual punishment during the game.

We’ve also seen a severe lack of calls against the Maple Leafs as well, where referees seem too scared or bashful to punish other teams and while the team’s power-play has improved dramatically recently; they aren’t getting nearly as many chances.

The Toronto Maple Leafs do not get the referees help at all…

This is no more evident than when Chris Cuthbert relayed some stats to the Sportsnet audience regarding the Maple Leafs and their inability to get calls to go their way.

During the Maple Leafs vs. Panthers broadcast on Tuesday, Cuthbert explained that although the Panthers and Maple Leafs have both played 41 games, the Panthers have a staggering 52 more power-play opportunities:

The issues continued as the Maple Leafs have been out-penalized in their game against Florida, and have had to rely on their staunch penalty kill which has been phenomenal since the start of December:

You can see there is an obvious discrepancy between who gets called and who doesn’t with only a handful of teams like the Penguins, Rangers, Kraken and Devils have less called against them (per MoneyPuck as of Jan. 6).

But that’s not going to stop the Maple Leafs though

Those two incidents came with no punishment and a fine respectively and both resulted in injuries meanwhile McMann’s while punishable; was not nearly as dangerous or malicious.

It’s frustrating to see the Maple Leafs getting the short end of the stick when it comes to power-play opportunities and it’s likely a reason why they weren’t able to get things going before. How can they succeed when they barely get a chance?

So it’s good to see them scoring more on the power-play now and making the most of their seemingly very limited opportunities.

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The Maple Leafs and Panthers have played the same amount of games but the power-play gap remains notable

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