The Price of Truculence

In his recent make-over of the Leafs, Burke picked up three players who combined for 434 penalty minutes last season.

To put that total in perspective, the entire Carolina Hurricanes roster put up just 786 PiMs and the Red Wings just 810.

The Orr, Exelby, Komisarek trifecta had exactly half of the PiMs taken by the third least penalized club in the NHL the Minnesota Wild.

If the Leafs and their new players are penalized at the same rate as last season, the Leafs will easily be the most penalized team in the NHL racking up over 1400 PiMs.

That works out to an additional 4 minutes in the box each and every game or about 17 penalty minutes a night.

Now I’m not saying that it’s a given that the Leafs are going to lead the league in penalty minutes or that there’s some sort of linear progression or predictive model here. But I am saying that the Leafs are going to be spending far more time in the penalty box in 2009-2010, which may be a huge price to pay for Burke’s much vaunted truculence.

The reason smash mouth hockey worked for Burke in Anaheim was that his Ducks could roll out some of the best PK talent in the league: Pahlsson, Pronger, Beauchemin, Moen and Marchant.

It’s an entirely different story in Toronto.

Since the lockout, the Leafs penalty kill has been ranked 24th; 27th; 29th; and 30th.

If the Leafs continue to kill penalties at their average post-lockout rate of about 78%, this team will need a bigger scoreboard to keep track of the goals against.

The Leafs have about $5M in cap space remaining. They might want to put this toward some solid PK talent.

Komisarek is a good start. He led the Habs in short-handed time on ice (SHTOI) and the Habs put up the 11th best PK in the league.

Exelby? He was fourth among D-men in Atlanta in SHTOI, but Atlanta had the 29th ranked PK in the league.

If the Leafs can’t improve their PK this season, it pretty much won’t matter what other moves Burke makes.