A deep dive into the Toronto Maple Leafs lack of secondary scoring

The most talked about issue, besides the lack of playoff success in Leafs Land, is the Toronto Maple Leafs are the only organization in the NHL that spends more than half of their salary cap towards four forwards.

The Maple Leafs core of Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner, and former captain, John Tavares have no problem scoring goals in the regular season. The Maple Leafs were second highest in goals for last season with 298. In the Sheldon Keefe era, the Maple Leafs consistently ranked high in goals for.

However, one criticism is that outside of these core four players, the Maple Leafs lack secondary scoring. In this article, we will examine data from nhl.com for the 2022–23, 2023–24, and current regular season to try to quantify secondary production.

Segmenting the data based on time on ice

When trying to determine the points by forward line, the question becomes “how much time on ice does a player need to play for them to be classified as an ‘x’-line player?” 

Unfortunately, there is no agreed-upon time-on-ice usage, likely because it varies from team to team and from system to system. This is what was used to determine whether a forward is a first, second, third, or fourth liner:

• First liner: greater than or equal to 18:00 toi;
• Second liner: greater than or equal to 16:00 toi and less than 18:00 toi;
• Third liner: greater than or equal to 13:00 toi and less than 16:00 toi; and
• Fourth liner: less than 13:00 toi

For players who were traded, the team they finished the season on was the team that would receive their point totals. Furthermore, the time on ice data is the average toi over all their games played. 

This is not ideal because some players may play 18:30 one night (i.e., first-line minutes) and then possibly play 16:30 another night (i.e., second-line minutes). However, the data available on nhl.com was not sufficiently granular to break out the points by team for the traded players, nor give the game-by-game data that is readily accessible.

Nevertheless, upon categorizing all forwards that played in the NHL over the regular seasons of interest, then aggregating by team, and then taking the average goals and average points by line across all NHL teams, here is what was found:

Table 1. Table showing the average goals and average points across all NHL teams by line and by regular season

	2022–23		2023–24		2024–25
	Avg. Goals	Avg. Points	Avg. Goals	Avg. Points	Avg. Goals	Avg. Points
First Line	88	211	88	216	35	89
Second Line	58	136	54	120	25	57
Third Line	44	106	49	113	25	56
Fourth Line	33	74	31	68	12	28

Table 2. Table showing the total goals and total amount of points for the Toronto Maple Leafs by line and by regular season

	2022–23		2023–24		2024–25
	Total Goals	Total Points	Total Goals	Total Points	Total Goals	Total Points
First Line	110	271	135	290	76	170
Second Line	52	110	50	108	N/A*	N/A*
Third Line	86	198	42	122	20	46
Fourth Line	21	42	57	105	12	26

* Note: Based on time on ice categorization, available data, and how the Maple Leafs have used forwards this year, none of the Maple Leafs’ players met the toi definition of “second line”, so it is N/A.

As we can see:

1. The Maple Leafs are way above average for first-line production across all years. This is not a surprise given the Maple Leafs are near the top of goals for in the league year after year
2. Players who play second-line minutes on the Maple Leafs produce less than average when compared to other teams in the NHL for the 2022–23 and 2023–24 regular seasons
3. When comparing third-line production, the Maple Leafs produced way above average in 2022–23, but less than average in goals in 2023-24 and so far less than average goals and points in 2024–25
4. The Maple Leafs were below-average in fourth-line production in 2022–23, above-average production in 2023-24, and are currently producing at the average for the current season

Unfortunately, one limitation to examining the data this way is that different teams and different systems utilize players differently. Regardless, for a team that has Stanley Cup aspirations, the Maple Leafs are lacking secondary scoring this year and are at best average, when examining the data from this perspective.

Segmenting the data by removing the top four contributors

Another way to examine the data is to simply remove the top contributors. Generally speaking, the top point-producing forwards are probably playing on a team’s first and second line. While this may help get around the player utilization issues as when looking at time-on-ice comparisons as we did above, this does not control for team system differences.

In the case of the Maple Leafs, the team has been criticized for the “ride or die by the core four” throughout the years. So when we removed the top four forwards of each NHL team and aggregated the data, here are the results:

Table 3. Table showing total goals and total points by the regular season of the Toronto Maple Leafs and league average excluding the top four goal and top four point contributors.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Maple Leafs ranked highly in 2022–23 and 2023–24 in secondary goal support and secondary points contrary to the talking points around the league. However, looking at this year so far, the Maple Leafs clearly need secondary scoring, being at league average in secondary goals, below league average in secondary points, and ranked in the bottom third of the league for both.

This stark contrast is likely due to system changes: The Maple Leafs under Sheldon Keefe were a puck-possession team and also focused on scoring off the rush. Under Craig Berube, the Maple Leafs play more dump-and-chase hockey, while focusing on strong team defence.

Conclusion

While this analysis is not the end-all-be-all, perhaps the criticism of the Maple Leafs needing secondary scoring was overblown in the Sheldon Keefe era, depending on how you look at the data. At worst, under Sheldon Keefe, the Maple Leafs were average in secondary scoring.

However, the playoffs are a different animal, and we know how the primary and secondary scoring fared in the playoffs under Sheldon Keefe (hint: not very well). It is a bit worrying that so far under Craig Berube, the team is generally well below average in secondary scoring. In either case, the average or near average is simply not good enough.

The trade deadline is still months away, and it may take a while for the Maple Leafs to adjust to a different system compared to what they have played for the last eight years. Regardless, no matter how you look at the data, the Maple Leafs desperately need more secondary scoring this year.