Joseph Woll’s struggles weren’t helped by Maple Leafs defensive woes

Joseph Woll has been a calm and steady workhorse presence over his time as a Toronto Maple Leaf. He has been the ideal netminder for serving as part of a tandem, capable of running with the net for stretches of time but never seeming reluctant to maintain a platooning situation either, even when he was the goaltender with the stronger results.

The Stolarz/Woll tandem was intended to be a bright spot for the Maple Leafs as long as they could maintain their health, but 2025-26 had other plans each of them.

How the season went

It was a rough start to the 2025-26 season for Joseph Woll. For personal reasons, Woll missed the first month of the season and he certainly was missed. Anthony Stolarz as well as waiver claim Cayden Primeau had a rough go in net in October and that set the tone for a Maple Leafs downward spiral that it was difficult to pull out of.

By the time Woll was back in the lineup, the Maple Leafs were already without Chris Tanev, save for a few late December games, and the team defence was in complete disarray. Anthony Stolarz wasn’t looking like himself and Woll needed to be the saviour for the Maple Leafs, and throughout November and December he was.

The problem with Woll is that like Stolarz, he has a limit. You can’t toss him in the net every single night and expect the results to continue at a high level and without a strong team in front of him, he came back down to earth by January and from then on out, Woll had his worst year as a Maple Leaf. After Woll stood on his head for about two months, he was tired and no one returned the favour for him.

It’s not to say that Woll looked as good as ever this season, he didn’t. A big part of this could be that he was overworked, but even after Stolarz returned and the net was being shared or after extended time off for the Olympic break, there wasn’t a rebound in Woll’s performance that was sustained. He was decent and if he had a good team in front of him he probably still would have been a .900 save percentage goaltender, but there seemed to be a drop off in his reaction time that held him back as well.

Statistical profile

Category	Production	Rank
Goals Saved Above Expected	-6.6	50th out of 66
Goals Saved Above Expected/60	-0.178	48th
Save Percentage	0.898	28th
High Danger Unblocked Shot Save Percentage	0.673	39th

All situation stats from Moneypuck.com, rankings out of goaltenders with 20 or more appearances.

When you look at Joseph Woll’s save percentage and see him 28th in the league it is clear that it simply wasn’t a great year for goaltending. The additional numbers above show that it might not entirely be a blame the team around Woll for his decline though. Both Woll and Stolarz might have had rough years, but Dennis Hildeby enjoyed a “they haven’t figured me out yet” type of success story in the Leafs’ net this season and was statistically one of the top goaltenders in the NHL in his 20 games played.

Goaltenders might not be voodoo, but they are so interconnected to everything else that is happening on the ice, it’s hard to make a case for or against them purely off of statistics. Woll has shown himself to be a solid goaltender in the past, and while some of the Leafs lack of success might have come from Woll not being as dominant as he was last season, there is an equal part of the relationship that means Woll’s numbers have suffered from playing behind a team that was without its top defensive defenceman for most of the season, allowed one of their superstars to leave, and had to deal with significant time lost to some of the other star players.

You can also point to less David Kampf and Calle Jarnkrok in the lineup and having them replaced with checking forwards instead might have resulted in less defensive help from forwards, and again, the absence of Mitch Marner in the defensive zone is probably something a goaltender would have noticed.

Woll isn’t exactly a superstar goaltender but he is reliable and is better than his 2025-26 season. If the Maple Leafs are retooling, he’ll be a big part of that and likely be the veteran sharing the net with Dennis Hildeby in 2026-27. If the Maple Leafs are rebuilding, in a league where quality goaltenders are limited, it’s possible that Woll will be playing against the Maple Leafs next season instead of for them.

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