In Part I, several PPP contributors gave their thoughts on the pressing questions entering the 2010-2011 NHL season. Today's second and final section will deal with individual performance and team expectations. Who will lead the Leafs in scoring? Who will be the better goaltender? Can we expect significant development from players such as Nik Kulemin or Tyler Bozak? And the most important question of all: Will this year's Toronto Maple Leafs team make the Stanley Cup Playoffs?
Find out after the jump...
First of all, let me explain our method. Chemmy devised a user-friendly spreadsheet that allowed each contributor to predict goal totals for every Leaf player. In addition, it was possible to enter games played and final save percentage for both J.S. Giguere and Jonas Gustavsson. Using Chemmy's pythagorean expectation formula, the spreadsheet was able to give the predicted total points for the season. PPP, Chemmy, Skinnyfish, mf37, Karina, and myself each filled out a copy of this spreadsheet, Then, using the averages for each player, found a predicted points total for the team.
Here's a direct link to the spreadsheet: http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/450148/predictions.xls
Feel free to fill out the file on your own and post the results in the comments.
And now....(drumroll please)............
2010-2011 Goal Predictions
forwards:
Kris Versteeg - 25 Tyler Bozak - 18 Phil Kessel - 37
Nik Kulemin - 21 Mikhail Grabovski - 17 Clarke MacArthur - 16
Fredrik Sjostrom - 7 Tim Brent - 6 Colby Armstrong - 13
Colton Orr - 3 Mike Zigomanis - 3 Mike Brown - 3
Caputi/Hanson/Mitchell - 11
defense:
Francois Beauchemin - 6 Dion Phaneuf - 13
Tomas Kaberle - 7 Mike Komisarek - 2
Carl Gunnarsson - 5 Luke Schenn - 5
Total Goals Forced: 218
Goaltending Predictions
J.S. Giguere - 50 GP, .912 SV%
Jonas Gustavsson - 32 GP, .907 SV%
Shots Allowed per game: 30
Total Goals Allowed: 221
Predicted Season Points Total = 89
Considering the team's lottery finish last year, an eighty-nine point season would show excellent progress for the Leafs. Unfortunately, it would not be enough to make the 2011 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Since the lockout, the average point total needed to finish with the 8th and final seed in the Eastern Conference is 91.8. The Leafs would fall 3 points short of that mark. The Leafs would be out of the lottery, but still golfing in April. But what do we know?
We'll revisit this post at the end of the season. Hopefully it will be with embarrassment due to our lack of faith in the team's performance. Don't forget to fill out your own version of the excel file and be sure to make your predictions in the comments!