The Maple Leafs fell to 7-4-0 on the season with a 4-2 defeat to the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday night. The Leafs have now lost three of their last four while conceding 16 goals over the three losses, dropping them to 28th in the league in goals against through 11 games.
Your game in ten:
1) This was another loss where Mike Babcock spoke afterward about turnovers in neutral ice. This is a decent example of what the Leafs are doing far too often on breakouts so far this season:
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Worth noting here is that the defencemen are crossed up on their wrong sides, and Roman Polak looks to advance the puck up ice where he could have used the hinge option to Andreas Borgman, who would’ve had space to skate the puck up ice. But when Polak looks up to survey his options, all three Leaf forwards are instantly ripping out of the zone looking for a stretch pass. The puck ultimately goes up the wall for an icing.
In the Carolina game on Thursday, we saw the fast, organized breakouts with support through the middle we’ve traditionally seen from Mike Babcock teams – except it was Bill Peters’ Hurricanes executing it, while the Leafs were mostly playing stretch hockey.
2) Prior to the Flyers’ 1-0 goal, the lazy backcheck from Mitch Marner that Don Cherry highlighted at the intermission wasn’t pretty, but there was a similar breakout just before on a flip from Bozak into neutral ice with Marner and Marleau taking off. When are we going to see more of the tidy five-man breakouts typically associated with Babcock hockey? The flip and chase has become more commonplace throughout the league, but it can’t be the only play in the playbook when teams are putting honey on the neutral zone to try to combat the Leafs’ speed.
3) The great mystery here is whether the Leafs have changed their strategy in accordance with their personnel – lots of skill and speed up front, weak on the blue line – or if Babcock just doesn’t have his players buying in fully yet (it’s hard to sell the program when you’re scoring four or five a game with ease). We saw more structure from Babcock’s Leafs team in 2015-16; they just had none of the talent. We did see more structure than this as Babcock got his systems dialled in later in the season last year. Regardless, the coaching staff has to get this sorted out – the team is turning pucks over like crazy in the neutral zone and they’re giving up too many chances against in transition. This team has enough issues staying organized in its own zone and can ill-afford to be coughing up odd-man looks against all night.
4) The challenge for the coaching staff will be attempting to implement structure in the team’s game with so little practice time. The Leafs now begin the dreaded Western road swing through California and Missouri with four games in six nights. Before their four-day break between November 12 and 16, the Leafs will play eight games in 13 nights, including two back-to-backs.
5) The second Flyers goal was just a flat out missed call by the officials. If Leo Komarov isn’t blatantly interfered with, he takes the chip pass from Morgan Rielly on the wall and dumps it in deep. Instead, it’s a 2-on-1 in transition against. Just a brutal miss by the refs.
6) The third goal was on Connor Brown, who knew it as soon as it went in the net. The lack of shoulder check allowed Valtteri Filppula to sneak in behind him off a rush on the power play. Brown made up for it with an otherwise good game on the team’s best, most hard-working line – Kadri, Komarov and Brown – including a little touch in front to set up Kadri’s second goal.
That said, Kadri took a bad line on the back-breaking 4-2 Claude Giroux goal just after he got the team back in it at 3-2. At some point, though, Frederik Andersen’s got to come up with a save — on at least one of those 3-1 or 4-2 goals to keep his team in it, and he probably should’ve had the 1-1 goal, too. He lost the goaltending battle to Brian Elliott handily.
7) It goes without saying that you can’t play firewagon hockey and not have a goalie in your net who is on top of his game if you’re planning on winning consistently. The confidence and “quietness” in his crease we saw from Andersen coming out of preseason and in the first regular season game in Winnipeg seems like a distant memory now, and he’s got to fight his way back.
8) Prior to the 3-2 goal for the Leafs, that was quite the impressive play at the line by Morgan Rielly to fend off Jakub Voracek at full speed, absorb contact, stay strong on his feet and keep the puck in. It wasn’t exactly the same thing, but it made me think back to another play Rielly made at the blue line a few years back that showed off the same kind of freak athleticism and balance on his skates.
9) Mighty impressed by Josh Leivo’s ability to spend endless time in the press box and still find ways to instantly make an impact when he finally dresses (four shots on goal and one assist in a little less than 15 minutes TOI). That can’t be easy to do. Almost without fail, whenever he’s made an appearance in the last two seasons, he plays with a tonne of urgency and is constantly making things happen, be it with skilled touches off the rush or creating down low. Dating back to last season, Leivo has 11 points in his last 10 NHL games including his point on the first Nazem Kadri goal tonight. It’s bizarre to type that out knowing he’s likely headed back to the press box on Monday night.
10) The marathon shift in the second period didn’t look great on the Borgman – Polak pairing, who couldn’t get to the bench with the long change, but what an exercise in careless puck management that sequence was from the forward group, specifically Bozak and Marner. The cavalierness and the lack of situational awareness from Bozak here with a chance to get the puck deep was astounding:
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The Leafs followed it up with a couple of icings, and the Borgman – Polak pair plus Marner were out there for nearly two full minutes. Ugly.
