What happens if the Leafs’ goaltending isn’t elite this season?
Anthony Stolarz continues to make nice.
A couple weeks ago, the towering Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender was justifiably breathing fire, furious about the lack of competitiveness and protection his teammates were providing in the area around his net.
But lately, he’s all smiles. Maybe it’s the two consecutive victories, which halted Toronto’s early-season losing streak at three games. Maybe it’s the Toronto Blue Jays’ World Series run, which has undoubtedly energized the Leafs and had them hooting and hollering in the dressing room Tuesday night when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. homered off Shohei Ohtani in Game 4. Because Stolarz didn’t fixate on the horrible miscommunication between defensemen Morgan Rielly and Philippe Myers, which had allowed the Calgary Flames‘ Samuel Honzek to walk in uncontested and tie Tuesday’s game with 5:11 left in the third period. Nope, Stolarz accentuated the positives after the Leafs’ 4-3 win when The Leafs Nation’s Arun Srinivasan asked him for his thoughts on the team’s rush defense this season.
“Yeah, it’s been improving,” Stolarz said. “I think that’s the biggest thing. It’s a long process, it’s a long season. You’re gonna have those breakdowns. It’s inevitable that we’re all human, we’re gonna make mistakes. And guys are gonna get odd-man rushes, we’re gonna get odd-man rushes. So I like the game tonight. We limited their chances. Guys are smart about stepping up in the neutral zone. And I thought we formed a wedge in the middle there and limited their offense.”
Stolarz is finding his serenity despite the fact that, visibly, the Leafs aren’t doing a great job clearing his crease early this season, most notably Tuesday when Joel Farabee was free to take multiple whacks at a loose puck on the blue ice before burying Calgary’s second goal.
But here’s the thing: despite what our eyes tell us, despite the narrative that the Leafs aren’t helping their goaltenders enough early this season: Not much has actually changed from last season to this season in the Leafs’ defensive play. The Leafs are allowing 3.82 goals per game, fifth-worst in the NHL, after sitting eighth-best at 2.79 last season, but it’s not because their defense has cratered. Some metrics indicate they’ve gotten slightly worse, but, more than anything else, it’s their goaltending that has regressed early on.
The Leafs are allowing marginally fewer scoring chances and expected goals than they did last season at 5-on-5, with very mild increases in shots and high-danger chances against. But after they posted the third-best team save percentage in the NHL last season at .912, they sit 29th in this young season at .874.
Despite the aforementioned storyline of Stolarz needing more help from his teammates, here’s a snapshot showing the difficulty of his 5-on-5 workload per 60 last season versus this season, per Natural Stat Trick:
| Season | Shots | Expected goals | HD against | Rush attempts | Rebounds against | Shot distance |
| 2024-25 | 27.67 | 2.6 | 6.04 | 2.54 | 6.57 | 38.19 |
| 2025-26 | 27.42 | 2.39 | 6.47 | 1.39 | 4.62 | 36.88 |
So Stolarz is facing roughly the same number of shots and slightly more high-danger shots but far fewer rush attempts and rebounds. The overall expected goals number is lower this season than last. On the whole, we can call the playing conditions a wash compared to last year, if not slightly more favorable. But whereas Stolarz led the NHL in goals saved above expected per 60 last year – and the year before – among 37 goalies with five or more games played this season, Stolarz is 30th in goals saved above expected per 60.
Straight up: Stolarz hasn’t been very good so far this season after signing a lauded four-year extension in September at $3.75 million contract hit.
What does it mean? Probably not much – yet. Stolarz has mostly been excellent in his tenure as a Leaf, and a subpar first eight games of 2025-26 doesn’t mean he’s regressed. But it might mean he’s buckling a bit under the most significant workload of his career. Last season, he started 33 games, breaking a previous career high of 24. The 33 starts constituted 40.2 percent of the Leafs’ schedule. Even that workload was taxing on Stolarz’s 6-foot-6, 248-pound frame, as he endured multiple absences due to injury – 24 games due to knee surgery during the regular season, then the remainder of Toronto’s playoff run due to a head injury sustained in Game 1 of the second round against the Florida Panthers. This season, while the Leafs wait for 1B goaltender Joseph Woll to work his way back from an absence that cost him October, Stolarz has started eight of 11 games, meaning a man who has never logged more than 40.2 percent of an NHL team’s workload sits at 72.7 percent so far in 2025-26 with the Leafs not trusting backup Cayden Primeau much and Dennis Hildeby remaining in the AHL with the Marlies.
The Leafs, then, pretty badly need Woll back. He sat seventh last year in goals saved above expected per 60, making him one of the best 1Bs in the NHL. They obviously can’t rush Woll into action given whatever ailment and/or life situation he was dealing with. But they sure will be happy when he returns. Stolarz had been the NHL’s best goaltender on a per-start basis the previous two years – grading out even better than back-to-back Vezina winner Connor Hellebuyck – but Stolarz may not be built to log massive workloads the way Hellebuyck is.
More bad news: the Leafs have been lucky on the penalty kill, which has a higher efficiency than last year’s but is bleeding chances at a much higher rate. If Toronto’s masked men don’t bail them out the way they did last year, far more wins will turn to losses, and the Leafs could find themselves fighting for a Wildcard berth, not a division title.
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POST SPONSORED BY bet365
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