I meant to have gotten this one out last week, oh well. Shit happens.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are going through a bit of a revival since Auston Matthews' return from injury. Matthews was placed on injured reserve on November 8 with an upper-body injury. He returned to the lineup on November 26, just in time for a 2-1 OT win against the Columbus Blue Jackets. In the six games since, the Leafs are 4-1-1.

Caveat: Six games is an incredibly small sample size, but let’s look at some numbers. The Leafs (who have struggled with goaltending) lead the league in 5v5 team SV% in that six-game stretch (.960), and they’re second in shooting percentage with a 14.04 at 5v5. The screenshot above captures both stats combined into PDO over the course of their past 10 games. But what’s a little telling is that two of their recent wins were against the Florida Panthers and the Carolina Hurricanes.

The Panthers are certainly going through their issues at the moment (14-12-2 record as of this writing), and the Leafs seemed to have caught them near the end of their Florida-man-woes. The Panthers are now on a two-game win streak with a combined score of 11-7 (we’ll look at Sergei Bobrovsky in another post). Carolina is one of the league’s best teams, even though they just lost 4-1 against the San Jose Sharks (Macklin Celebrini had a three-point night, so there’s that).

In the Leafs' tiny sample size, they have a 5v5 expected goals for of 12.67 and expected goals against of 13.92. They’ve outperformed both metrics with an actual goals for of 16 and actual goals against of six. Auston Matthews' goal differential rate (relative to teammate) is the second-highest on the team with +1.43/60 on the season. He has five points in his last six games. I guess I’m throwing those numbers out there because while Matthews' presence certainly boosts the Leafs' performance, I don’t think this recent stretch of success is squarely on him.

With goaltender Anthony Stolarz out since Nov. 15 (he last played on Nov. 8), backup Joseph Woll has had to step up. In that six-game stretch, Woll started four of those games and lost once (Washington). Woll was placed on IR retroactive to Dec. 4 after sustaining a lower-body injury against the Hurricanes. Dennis Hildeby started in two games and won one (Pittsburgh) and lost against the Montreal Canadiens in the shootout. Goaltending has been a serious question, and that question mark just got a whole lot bolder.

I do have questions surrounding the Leafs' defense (they’re slow), how their roster is constructed, and their special teams (their power play is 30th and their PK is 12th). But now that their goaltending situation got a little hairier (gross saying), Hildeby is going to have to shoulder a lot of responsibilities for the rest of the Leafs' issues to sort themselves out if they want to get back into a playoff spot. At sixth place in the Atlantic Division, they are four points out of a wild-card spot with 30 points.