Toronto Maple Leafs: Is Justin Holl the NHL’s Jose Bautista?

The Toronto Maple Leafs feel-good story of the century so far is the one about Justin Holl.

Drafted in the second round by the Blackhawks in 2010, Justin Holl never signed with the team that drafted him, and was scooped up by the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2015 as a UFA.

Holl didn’t make his NHL debut until eight seasons after he was drafted.  In professional sports, if players tend to peak around the age of 23, and in the vast, vast majority of cases, if you haven’t made it by then, you’re not making.

In the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons, Holl played a combined 13 games, which more or less seemed like the organization throwing him a bone for his great AHL performance.  Other than Holl’s Mom and perhaps his girlfriend, it is doubtful that anyone else on earth thought he we would become an NHL regular, let alone a top four player who, at age 28 is threatening to become a star player.

I can’t even think of a congruent NHL example, and so I will use the almost unbelievable tale of my personal sports hero, Jose Bautista.  Bautista was a warm body who the Jays acquired in 2008 at the age of 28.  He had played a couple seasons for the Pirates, but he was a “role 4 player” which means he was considered the type of player who would suit up for a bad team but no contender would be interested in him. (Sportsnet.ca).

At the age of 29, players don’t just become stars. You don’t hit 54 home runs and then put up six straight MVP worthy seasons as a guy in your early thirties.  It doesn’t happen, which is why Jose Bautista is the most awesome athlete ever.  Well, that and the fact he’s the most bad-ass cool guy in the universe this side of the Fonze and Bruce Springsteen.

Now I’m not saying that Justin Holl is going to suddenly become a Norris contender and become the NHLs Jose B. I’m just saying that it’s a similar situation because people don’t just become pro athletes in their late twenties, let alone stars.

But Holl is damned good, and his hair does make him look almost as cool on the ice as Jose’s sunglasses made him look on the field. (Unknown Bautista Triva: Jose is the only person  in the earth’s history who has ever looked cool in a pair of plastic bro-sunglasses. This is a documented fact).

Last year Holl put up better stats than Colton Parayko, a player the Leafs were said to be interested in for the last several years.  Both players played among the toughest minutes in the NHL.

Still, no respect for the man whose hair makes William Nylander jealous.  TSN, rather infamously now, ranked him as a #5 heading into the season, and with a chance for a do-over last week also said pretty much the same thing.   They credited his success to Jake Muzzin but they shouldn’t.

So far this season, 73 NHL defenseman have played 90 minutes or more.

Justin Holl ranks first among them in Corsi (shot-attempts expressed as a percentage) with a 61.61% rating. (All stats naturalstattrick.com).

He ranks first in Fenwick, he ranks first in shots-for percentage. He ranks third in expected-goals percentage and third in scoring-chances for percentage.  He ranks second in points at 5v5 with three assists.  He is ninth by points per sixty minutes of ice time.

Essentially, what we have seven games into the season is the best player on the Leafs and the best defenseman in the NHL. Now, I’m not going to sit here and say that Justin Holl will continue to be the best defenseman in the NHL, but who among us looked at Jose Bautista’s 54 HR explosion in 2009 and wrote it off as a fluke.  All of us, that’s who.

Will Justin Holl continue to dominate games, play the most minutes on the Toronto Maple Leafs and make fools out of even the best NHL analysts?  I don’t know.  You might be tricked into thinking that I know, since I have been singing his praises for the last year, but this is really more of a broken clock situation, I don’t know anything.

What I do know is that the improbable rise of Justin Holl is currently the best story in pro sports.