TORONTO – The 2019-20 AHL season was cancelled on May 11, cutting the Marlies campaign short at 61 games. Through those 61 games, the Marlies went through three coaches, four goalies, two home arenas, and a partridge and in a pear tree. We dug back through The Sin Bin stat archives and crunched the monthly numbers.
OVERALL RECORD
For the Marlies, it was a roller coaster season filled with injuries and a moving carousel of a roster. Beginning strong, Toronto found themselves rising near the top of the league, but began to slowly fall off the mountain before steady improvement in the second half of February.
| MONTH | GP | WINS | LOSSES | % |
| OCTOBER | 8 | 6 | 2 | 75% |
| NOVEMBER | 12 | 8 | 4 | 66.7% |
| DECEMBER | 12 | 5 | 7 | 41.7% |
| JANUARY | 11 | 3 | 8 | 27.2% |
| FEBRUARY | 13 | 5 | 8 | 38.4% |
| MARCH | 5 | 3 | 2 | 60% |
| TOTAL | 61 | 30 | 31 | 49.1% |
GOALS FOR AND AGAINST AVERAGES
Toronto constantly found themselves near the top of the league in goals. Led by Kenny Agostino, the Marlies averaged a swift 3.38 goals forced per game (GFA), good for fifth in the AHL. The number of goals against (GAA) did find a spike to start 2020, but lowered as the year continued.
| MONTH | GOALS FOR | GOALS AGAINST | GFA | GAA |
| OCTOBER | 28 | 18 | 3.50 | 2.25 |
| NOVEMBER | 47 | 35 | 3.91 | 2.91 |
| DECEMBER | 36 | 42 | 3.00 | 3.50 |
| JANUARY | 35 | 45 | 3.18 | 4.09 |
| FEBRUARY | 45 | 53 | 3.46 | 4.07 |
| MARCH | 14 | 18 | 2.80 | 3.60 |
| TOTAL/AVERAGE | 203 | 211 | 3.32 | 3.45 |
GOALTENDING
Marlies netminders Kasimir Kaskisuo and Joseph Woll both played consistently through the 2019-20 season. To break things down further, we recorded the numbers on a month-by-month basis.
NOTE: The numbers included do not include the stats from when the player was pulled from the bench. The average is based on a monthly average.
| MONTH | KASKISUO STARTS | KASKISUO SVS% | KASKISUO GAA | WOLL STARTS | WOLL SVS% | WOLL GAA |
| OCTOBER | 5 | 0.931 | 1.80 | 3 | 0.880 | 3.00 |
| NOVEMBER | 4 | 0.939 | 2.50 | 5 | 0.886 | 3.40 |
| DECEMBER | 6 | 0.860 | 3.60 | 6 | 0.874 | 3.16 |
| JANUARY | 5 | 0.902 | 2.80 | 6 | 0.865 | 3.66 |
| FEBRUARY | 5 | 0.880 | 3.00 | 6 | 0.869 | 2.50 |
| MARCH | 0 | – | – | 4 | 0.843 | 3.75 |
| TOTAL/AVERAGE | 25 | 0.902 | 2.74 | 30 | 0.869 | 3.24 |
SHOTS FOR AND AGAINST AVERAGES
Toronto has hardly ever been a team that’s been able to outshoot their opponent. Though the numbers fluctuated around the season, the Marlies slowly began to outshoot their opponent in the latter stages of the season. Toronto recorded the lowest number of shots for the season (13) in a game on December 15 against Rockford.
| MONTH | SHOTS FOR | SHOTS AGAINST | AVG SF/G | AVG SA/G |
| OCTOBER | 184 | 207 | 23.00 | 25.87 |
| NOVEMBER | 264 | 366 | 22.33 | 30.50 |
| DECEMBER | 247 | 302 | 20.5 | 22.50 |
| JANUARY | 257 | 309 | 23.36 | 28.09 |
| FEBRUARY | 350 | 346 | 26.92 | 26.61 |
| MARCH | 144 | 115 | 28.80 | 23.00 |
| TOTAL/AVERAGE | 1446 | 1645 | 23.70 | 26.96 |
SPECIAL TEAMS
As for Toronto’s power play and penalty killing, the chart looks wonky. The man advantage came out of the gate guns-a-blazing, but dropped in 2020. As for killing penalties, the Marlies hovered north of 86% to start, but never dropped below 75%.
| MONTH | POWER PLAY | PP % | PENALTY KILL | PK % |
| OCTOBER | 6/25 | 24% | 26/30 | 86.6% |
| NOVEMBER | 10/42 | 23.8% | 36/48 | 75% |
| DECEMBER | 11/46 | 23.9% | 41/48 | 85.4% |
| JANUARY | 9/38 | 23.6% | 30/39 | 76.9% |
| FEBRUARY | 8/50 | 16% | 39/51 | 76.4% |
| MARCH | 3/29 | 10% | 12/15 | 80% |
| TOTAL/AVERAGE | 47/230 | 20% | 184/231 | 79.6% |
TRAVEL DISTANCE
As for travel, the Marlies were a team that had good air miles. For Toronto, they had little trouble traveling back home between road games. During the month of January, the Marlies take their annual Boat Show road trip, as the Coca-Cola Coliseum and the Exhibition Grounds are turned into a sea of boats.
In this chart, I plotted how much traveling they did on a monthly basis, excluding travel back home in between road games.
| MONTH | GP | DISTANCE TRAVELED | RECORD | ORIGINAL LOCATION |
| OCTOBER | 8 | 2,410 mi. (3880 km) | 6-0-2 | Toronto, ON |
| NOVEMBER | 12 | 2,313 mi. (3,723 km) | 8-3-1 | Belleville, ON |
| DECEMBER | 12 | 1,835 mi. (2,954 km) | 5-7-0 | Toronto, ON |
| JANUARY | 11 | 3,985 mi. (6,414 km) | 3-6-2 | Toronto, ON |
| FEBRUARY | 13 | 1,554 mi. (2,501 km) | 5-8-0 | Toronto, ON |
| MARCH | 5 | 3,809 mi. (6,131 km) | 3-2-0 | Binghamton, NY |
| TOTAL | 61 | 15,906 mi. (25,598 km) | 30-26-5 | — |
WHAT’S COOL ON TWITTER
https://twitter.com/CarltonTheBear/status/1246900423404982272
A native of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Zack Power primarly covers the AHL’s Toronto Marlies . Follow Zack on Twitter for all the latest Marlies (and occasional Growlers) news and notes!
