Maple Leafs Have Tough Choice for Playoff Starting Goalie

The Toronto Maple Leafs have two goalies with very little playoff experience to lean on heading into the postseason.

Feb 23, 2025; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Joseph Woll (60) and goaltender Anthony Stolarz (41) celebrate their win against the Chicago Blackhawks at United Center. Mandatory Credit: David Banks-Imagn Images / David Banks-Imagn Images

The Toronto Maple Leafs have clinched a playoff berth for the ninth consecutive season and are looking to finally work past a trend of postseason disappointments. A key piece to finally making a deep run with the Maple Leafs’ current core is having a solid goalie between the pipes.

This season, the Maple Leafs have been backstopped mostly by Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll, two goalies who have an extremely short resume of playoff experience. The two combine for eight total postseason appearances with just four starts.

All four of those starts are from Woll over the last two brief playoff runs from the Maple Leafs.

Heading into the 2025 Playoffs, the Maple Leafs will have to choose between two very inexperienced netminders. They might be putting up good numbers in the regular season, every fan of the Maple Leafs knows things change in the playoffs.

Stolarz might be coming off of a Stanley Cup championship run with the Florida Panthers, but he has just 34 minutes of playoff ice time in his entire career. His one appearance came in relief of Sergei Bobrovsky in a blowout against the Edmonton Oilers in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final.

In his 34 minutes of ice time, Stolarz allowed three goals from 19 shots faced. Even if had made all 19 saves, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference for the Panthers, as they were boat raced 8-1.

The Panthers went on to win the Cup in seven games, and Game 4 was Stolarz’s first and to this point last playoff appearance.

A career backup until this season, Stolarz has played 30 games in 2024-25 with a 17-8-3 record, .920 save percentage, and 2.34 goals against average.

Woll has a little more playoff experience with seven total appearances and four starts. Focusing on last year’s playoffs, Woll made two starts and could have led the Maple Leafs past the first round, had it not been for a last-second injury.

Woll had stepped in for the struggling Ilya Samsonov to win Games 5 and 6 to force a Game 7 against the Boston Bruins. In the literal final second of Game 6, Woll was pitching a shutout and tried to make one last big save to seal the milestone. Morgan Geekie not only scored on the play to bust the shutout, but Woll suffered an injury and was unable to play in Game 7.

The Maple Leafs went on to lose Game 7 in overtime.

BOSTON BREAKS TORONTO'S HEART AGAIN 🐻

DAVID PASTRNAK WITH THE GAME 7 OT WINNER‼️ pic.twitter.com/AVHN5gZfaV

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) May 5, 2024

In his three total appearances during the 2024 Playoffs, Woll went 2-0 with a .964 save percentage and 0.86 goals against average.

In the 2024-25 regular season campaign, he has a 25-13-1 record with a .906 save percentage and 2.78 goals against average.

Deciding a starting goalie for the playoffs won’t be an easy choice for the Maple Leafs and much of that is due to the lack of postseason experience. Regular season success is a new tradition in Toronto, but so it postseason failures.

Goalie is the most important position in the sport, and the Maple Leafs will have to hope for the best no matter who they decide to roll the dice with.

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