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The Toronto Maple Leafs returned from the All-Star break with a whimper, suffering through their worst first period in eight years en route to a 6-3 loss to the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night.

Your game in ten:

1) Worth mentioning before we tear into the Leafs’ first period: The All-Star break hangover was a trend across the league tonight. The Panthers put six past the Senators, the Blue Jackets also racked up six against Rangers, the Wild scored five on the Oilers, the Hurricanes scored five against the Flyers, the Canadiens put up five against the Sabres, and the Jets scored five on the Blues. The Devils and Bruins both won 4-3 games as well. You get the point.

2) With that said, what a disaster of a first period from the Leafs. Jake Gardiner way underestimated the outside speed of Devin Shore and got torched for the first goal. The Leafs then lost their F3 on the second goal when Mitch Marner got sucked in as the third man on the forecheck, Martin Marincin made a bad decision to step up, and the Stars took full advantage of their numbers off the rush to create a chance and rebound finished off by Radek Faksa. Frederik Gauthier stumbled and lost his man off the wall leading to goal number three, chasing Frederik Andersen from the net. After Tyler Bozak got the Leafs on the board on the powerplay, line four got beat for the second time on the Stars’ fourth goal; after getting cycled on by the Stars’ fourth line, Roman Polak lost inside positioning on Brett Ritchie in front. After a Jamie Benn change-up on powerplay two minutes later, the Stars had five goals in the opening 18:22 of the game.

3) Normally, it’s the Leafs that are trying to break a game open and create rush chances. Tonight, they met a willing partner in the Stars, who generate a lot of their offense off the rush, and it produced a game that had the structure of a water balloon. The last five minutes of the second period, in particular, wasn’t far off the 3-on-3 All-Star scrimmages on Sunday – two teams trading hail mary’s to the opposite blue line.

4) It took the team’s worst first period since 2009, but we finally got a peak at Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner together and the tandem did not disappoint. The line looked great with Hyman driving the center lane and parking in front while Marner and Matthews played pitch and catch off the rush and cycle. There were multiple passing plays where it seemed like Matthews and Marner were the only two players on the ice, resulting in a number of grade-A scoring chances.

5) The two were a 65% CF together in 11 minutes of even strength action (albeit while chasing a big Dallas lead) and Natural Stat Trick credited the pair with 12 scoring chances for and 3 against in their TOI together (meaning, they generated a look from the home plate for each minute of ice time). Eight of those chances were from “high danger” areas.

6) After the game, Mike Babcock made sure to clarify the reason why Connor Brown was moved off the Matthews line, explaining that there was “no one else working” besides Brown and that he wanted to “help out the guys who weren’t working.” Brown played mostly with JVR and Bozak the rest of the way. Another takeaway from the Babcock presser: He didn’t address the group and won’t until he’s cooled off and watched the game tomorrow.

7) Mitch Marner’s 6-3 goal was a good example of something I’ve noticed about Marner all season – he’s very good at finishing shifts strong. When everyone else is sucking wind, Marner can dig in and apply a bit of extra forechecking pressure while his linemates change – I’ve seen him turn pucks over and create an offensive zone shift for the next group multiple times in the past – or, in tonight’s case, bury off the wing with a well-disguised release at the end of a shift. Marner jumps right into the play to start shifts and almost always finishes them hard.

8) That goal, as well as a point on the Bozak powerplay goal (a nice saucer pass across to JVR), gave Marner his 13th multi-point game of the season, ranking him tied for sixth in the entire NHL behind only Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Brent Burns, and Jeff Carter.

9) A tale of two games for the Leafs’ fourth line. They didn’t start on time and were on for two goals against in the first. As the game wore on, they were able to turn the tables and a) start generating some zone time, and b) score after Matt Martin collected a bad turnover and found Nikita Soshnikov for his second in the last three games (following a 32-game goalless streak). Soshnikov looked to have scored another after a fearless jam play in the crease, but the refs waived it off and didn’t overturn upon review.

Bad first aside, Gauthier is looking more and more like a real-deal fourth line center with some more upside to his game likely still to come. He’s getting heavier on the dot and is now over 50% on the season. It will be interesting to see if The Goat’s done enough to keep Ben Smith (who is well regarded by Babcock) out of the lineup; ostensibly, Smith is a player that was added purely for faceoff proficiency and penalty killing duty. In addition to his improvements on the dot and contributions on the PK, Gauthier has been giving them more at 5v5, in my view, in terms of his ability to keep plays alive for longer.

10) A good tweet from James Mirtle here pointing out the razor-thin margins for the Leafs as they begin their furious race to the finish: Toronto is three points out of home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs, and six points out of last in the Conference. Buckle up.


Shot Attempts – Score-adjusted 5v5


Shot Location Chart


Game In Six


Post-Game: Mike Babcock