Well. Well, well, well. We are at game 30, and did you predict the Leafs would be at 39 points after their first six sets of five games? I did not. The arithmetic is easy, the goal is six times six, which is 36, so the Leafs are three in the black on points.  If you believe in “on pace for”, which actually makes me extremely cranky, that rates out to 106 points.

There is no on pace, however, there is only ups and downs.

So there’s only two segments below six, and one of them missed by one point. There’s only been one bad stretch, and you can see in the rolling five-game total that that is the only time the Leafs were worse than last year’s ups and downs.

Last year at this time, the Leafs were really sort of bad, and then they went on a road trip and found themselves in the Arizona desert. What’s coming up for them this year?

The Oilers to start, later on today, which makes that the second part of a back-to-back. After that, the Leafs go on a short road trip to Philadelphia, Minnesota and Detroit. Yes that’s a weird trip. Perhaps the schedule maker doesn’t know where Minnesota is. This is all packed into next week with the last two games back-to-back. The fifth game of this coming set is the start of yet another back-to-back, and is the special 2 p.m. start time game at home to Carolina on December 19.

Five games in ten days, seven in 12 days, with three back-to-backs.  This really is the rough part of the schedule. Those three banked points might come in very handy, so maybe let’s not think about raising the bar just yet. Let’s try to jump this height a few more times first.

Analysis