Special teams have played a huge role in the success of the Toronto Maple Leafs for the past couple of seasons as both their power play and penalty kill have ranked in the upper echelon in the NHL during that time.
In particular, the Toronto Maple Leafs penalty kill was so effective that they often generated scoring chances while a man short, changing the notion of the penalty kill to more a “power kill” for the team.
Their success was fuelled by the presence of competent penalty killers such as Pierre Engvall, Ilya Mikheyev, Alexander Kerfoot, Noel Acciari, Ryan O’Reilly, Sam Lafferty and Justin Holl, along with the usual mainstays Mitch Marner and David Kampf.