Daily Faceoff Live: Can the Maple Leafs catch the Bruins in the Atlantic?

On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live, co-hosts Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk welcomed former Toronto Maple Leafs analyst Cam Charron onto the show for a chat about the Leafs’ goaltending and whether they can catch the Boston Bruins in the Atlantic Division.

The Maple Leafs and Bruins are the clear top two teams in the Atlantic to start the year, although Boston (with an otherworldly 21–3–1 record through 25 games) looks to be on another level than the rest of the league.

Toronto is five points back of Boston with two more games played. After praising the tandem of Matt Murray and Ilya Samsonov, Charron answered Seravalli’s question about the chances of the Maple Leafs usurping the Bruins atop the Atlantic.

Cam Charron: It’s a really tough task, just looking at their five-on-five goals-for percentage, which is probably the best indicator at this point in the season of how things are going to play out later on. Boston has an absolutely elite penalty kill right now, and it’s been them and New Jersey all season long pushing above 65 percent in terms of goals-for percentage, and then you see a big drop-off to the Leafs, who are actually third now. They had a really slow start offensively but they seem to have picked it up.

For the Bruins, though, what’s been interesting for me when looking at this team is they used to be a one-line team, they had that “Perfection Line” — Pastrnak, Bergeron, Marchand — going for so long, for so many years, and they really struggled without those guys on the ice. And they’ve kind of gone away from that, they traded for Taylor Hall and then re-signed him at the deadline a couple years ago, and that’s kind of given them not only a good second line but also pushed down some good players onto their third line, a well, so their bottom six is actually succeeding a lot more than it used to.

You can catch the whole episode here …