The Toronto Maple Leafs 4-3 victory over the bottom-dwelling New York Rangers on Wednesday was hockey’s version of the old Punchout video game, with both clubs being Glass Joe. The Leafs benefited from an embarrassing outing from former Vezina winner Igor Shesterkin (who is counting the days until his nightmarish season is finished), who allowed four goals on just 18 shots, while the equally hapless Toronto team defense allowed 43 shots on goal on Joseph Woll to a club that managed only 10 shots against Ottawa on Monday.
If you did not know who was starting in goal, all you had to do was look at the shots and you would know definitively it was Woll, who has faced 32 shots or more in seven straight starts, as opposed to Anthony Stolarz, who faced only 20 shots against the Bruins on Tuesday.
The consecutive victories are regrettable in the Leafs pursuit of a top-five draft pick, as it has them now in the 12th draft slot if the season ended today, but that is slightly deceiving since Toronto has played 73 games (the most in the NHL), while every team except the Rangers below them in the standings have two, three, or four games in hand to gain ground.
Goaltending is the least of Toronto’s problems going into next season, unless you ask the completely tone-deaf Craig Berube, the coach who decided that Dennis Hildeby was not ready to be the backup at the start of the season, deciding to overplay an injury-prone Stolarz to start the year (which likely led to his mysterious two-month upper-body injury). The Leafs will be on the outside looking for the first time in a decade, not because of the trio who have played between the pipes, but because most of the skaters in front of them being borderline clueless on how to play the right way.
A recent piece in the Athletic indicated that there has been a level of desperation throughout the league that has caused GM’s to overpay average goalies, or roll the dice to trade for flawed netminders. The Edmonton Oilers are the poster child for this mismanagement, signing former Leaf Jack Campbell to a five-year, $25 million deal in 2022 and bought him out two years later, and this season traded with Pittsburgh for Tristan Jarry, who is making over $5 million the next two seasons.
One advantage that GM Brad Treliving has (or his successor will have) is that they have an asset that is in short supply throughout the league that can be moved to address another area of need. There was a fear that the four-year extension signed by Stolarz before the season would make the 32-year-old immovable, but if you look at the NHL landscape when it comes to goaltending, there are more teams in need of a goalie than there are goalies available.
The top two free agent goalies this summer are former Leaf Freddie Andersen (who might be on the verge of retirement), and former Oiler Stuart Skinner. There is chatter that Jordan Binnington may be on the market with one year left on his deal if the St. Louis Blues continue to sell off pieces. After that, there is chatter that Samuel Montembeault could be moved out in Montreal with Jakub Dobes and rookie Jacob Fowler set to be the tandem of the future, while Buffalo is likely to shop Devon Levi, who has been buried in Rochester all season.
From the Leafs perspective, the goalie to clearly deal is Stolarz, with Woll being five years younger and arguably the better of the two. The four-year term may scare some teams away, and it is well established that the big netminder cannot handle the workload of a #1 starter, but he is fully capable of being a tandem goalie and his $3.75 million cap hit with a rising salary cap is affordable.
If you look at just the East, Ottawa, Florida, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Carolina, Pittsburgh, and Columbus may all be in need of a tandem starter or backup next season, which gives the Leafs an opportunity to move out a contract that was unwise and address an area on the club that’s sorely lacking.
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