The contrast between Maple Leafs’ 5-on-5 offence vs. power play is distorting reality

It’s a relatively quiet Saturday afternoon but there’s still some consternation about the Toronto Maple Leafs. There’s always noise, and the contrast between the team’s first-ranked 5-on-5 offence and 31st-ranked power play is creating a distortion effect, at least as it relates to how the team is analyzed and perceived.

If you succumb to the outrage industrial complex, you may have missed that the Maple Leafs registered an NHL-best 39 goals at 5-on-5. William Nylander and John Tavares are tied for 2nd with 13 points at 5-on-5, Matthew Knies is tied for 7th, while Auston Matthews is tied for 30th ahead of Saturday’s slate, via Natural Stat Trick. Matthews’ elite shot production has been evident all year. And now, he’s beginning to match his propensity to get into high-danger areas with the velocity and location he displayed two years ago.

Toronto ranks third in the NHL with 52 goals scored. Head coach Craig Berube spoke about how his team’s ability to score is the element he’s most proud of through the opening month of the season. So where does the anecdotal disconnect, or the manufactured outrage stem from? Toronto’s power play is connecting at a woeful 11.8 percent clip. The contrast between the team’s 5-on-5 offence and man advantage is obfuscating the narratives about the team’s offensive production.

What does this contrast mean to the team internally?

“Well, I’m not making excuses,” Berube said following Friday’s practice at the Ford Performance Centre. “We get one power play a game, maybe two. I mean, that’s a little bit of a problem for sure. Now, in saying that we got to do a better job of executing on our power play with the chances we have. And for me, we haven’t executed well enough. And I think that’s really what it boils down to. There’s been plays that we’ve had in tight or good chances. We miss a net. We didn’t execute well enough.”

The key to further power plays may be a result of a concerted attempt to draw further penalties, as The Leafs Nation’s Michael Mazzei argues. Berube enforces a direct north-style approach to the game, which should naturally invite further contact and a better whistle, but despite the poor connection thus far, the Leafs aren’t exactly inviting critiques just yet.

“I think we’ve had actually good scoring chances, opportunities, getting zone entries and stuff like that. So it’s just being positive. We also got to get to the net a little bit more in those high danger chances,” Nylander said after Friday’s practice.

Previous iterations of the Maple Leafs struggled with a top-heavy structure, where the headliners were asked to produce a disproportionate amount of the offence. More simply, the Core and the Others were clearly delineated, and the depth players didn’t often live up to the bill.

It’s different this year: Nick Robertson is unlocking his offence after a slow start to the year, Matias Maccelli and Bobby McMann both responded emphatically to healthy scratches, Max Domi is turning a corner and 20-year-old Easton Cowan is available on a moment’s notice to inject some life, hockey intelligence and tenacity into the lineup. Perhaps there’s a tendency to produce the same, stale criticism of the team after another typically slow start to October, but this team is structured differently with greater depth, and it’s paying off early.

The criticism of the Maple Leafs’ offence also emanates from aesthetic value, or again, more simply: there’s a large faction of analysts and fans alike that are bored by their style of play. A north-south structure may dictate pragmatic results, but the resounding opinion stemming from Scotiabank Arena is that the Maple Leafs aren’t fun to watch anymore. The improvisational qualities of going east-west to pull off highlight-reel plays, a staple of Sheldon Keefe’s tenure, has been completely eradicated from the 2025-26 Maple Leafs. They’re still scoring prolifically at 5-on-5, so the power play’s ineffectiveness has created a misnomer about the team overall.

“I think success, when you have success, when you show the guys, conversations with the guys about it all, they obviously believe in it more and understand that’s a good recipe for us to be successful,” Berube said Saturday morning about the north-south structure.

This isn’t to suggest that the Maple Leafs are above reproach. Berube called out Nylander during the first week of the season and he’s been one of the NHL’s most dominant players when he’s been in the lineup. Anthony Stolarz ripped into his team for their defensive shortcomings and lack of physicality following a loss to the Seattle Kraken. And the Maple Leafs’ rush defence has been the primary reason why they’re losing. The idea that the Maple Leafs’ stars aren’t producing is outright bizarre, and it stems from their ineffectiveness on the power play, as they’ve been winning their minutes handily at 5-on-5, even if the style doesn’t elicit many cheers.

Until the Maple Leafs win a Stanley Cup, this group will always be a magnet for criticism, with the weight falling on Tavares, Matthews and Nylander to deliver. They’ve been central components to the best 5-on-5 offence in the NHL through the opening month, and now the power play has to match the production in order to drown out the cacophony ringing through the Greater Toronto Area.