Despite 48 shots on net, the Craig Berube era started with the Maple Leafs’ first shutout loss in 227 games.
Your game in 10:
1. It’s not the note we wanted to start on, but we’d be remiss not to cover it. Whether this is more precautionary than serious remains to be seen, but we couldn’t get through camp and to the first regular season game without another Joseph Woll lower-body injury, seemingly of the non-contact variety again. What else needs to be said at this point outside of the old cliche about availability being the best ability? Once an accident, twice a coincidence, three times a pattern…
Coming off a three-year contract extension that doesn’t kick in until next year, and after Brad Treliving and Craig Berube were constantly asked about his durability all preseason as they kept Woll’s workload quite light, this was a game-day gut punch, not of the gravity of last May’s Game 7, but a similar sort of untimely, Woll-injury curveball. It’s getting old fast.
2. “Big” games, or at least ones with a heightened emotional buildup/intensity in this case, often weren’t started on time by the Leafs — more often waded into — under the prior head coach. The starting shift of this game was encouraging; the top line got the puck deep right away via Chris Tanev, Auston Matthews rattled the boards and recovered the puck, and the line went to work, directing a few pucks to the net quickly. Mitch Marner had a half chance in front, Morgan Rielly put a puck on net, and Tanev attempted another shot during a nice early push by the Leafs.
The period hinged on two sloppy Leaf penalties and a slow start on special teams, starting with Max Domi‘s undisciplined roughing penalty on the second shift of the game followed not long after by Conor Timmins‘ unnecessary slash to the hands defending a routine rush at the blue line.
3. The Toronto PK was a mess early on — sliced apart far too easily, not just on the goal-against sequence but also on the first PK, where Montreal created a good look from the middle for Juraj Slafkovsky and then a point-blank one-time play in the slot for a wide-open Nick Suzuki (Anthony Stolarz came up with a big pad save). This is not a confident Montreal power play after a tough 2023-24 and a terrible 2024 preseason, but the Leafs gave them some early belief, and they were mostly creating whatever they pleased in the first period. The first power play allowed the Habs to settle into the game and create some momentum.
The 1-0 goal was an immediate breakdown after a clean faceoff loss by Matthews, who followed it up by taking a looping route up top, and the whole unit went into scramble mode and lost its shape quickly. The one-time play in the middle to Suzuki was open, so was the cross-crease backdoor play to Cole Caufield, and Slafkovsky could take his pick of the two. The latter play was executed successfully to make it 1-0 Montreal.
Not to single out just one PKer in the first period — and Matthews nearly got on the end of a 2v1 with Marner at one point on the PK in the first period — but Matthews has work to do on the d-zone coverage/positioning/spacing elements while shorthanded, as we saw at times last season.
4. Overall, at five-on-five, the shot attempts were 22-15 Leafs, the shots were 13-9 Leafs, and the high-danger chances were 5-1 Leafs in the first period. Toronto fired 17 shots on goal in total, including eight from the defense in the opening 20 minutes.
It’s been obvious through preseason — and certainly clear again in this season opener — that the shot counts from the defense will be higher under Berube. The Leafs worked the puck low to high for shots from the point far more than the typical Keefe game. There will be less patiently holding onto possession on the perimeter with the aim of methodically breaking defenses down and more of a direct approach to funneling shots to the net. You wouldn’t find too many games with more than 14 shots on goal and more than 31 shot attempts from the defense (25 from sources other than Rielly!) during the Keefe era.
For periods of the game, the Leafs were not winning enough of the net-front battles to collect on second and third opportunities, but they also stuck with it and created more than enough opportunities to score at least a couple of goals in this game. The identity shift underway was clear to see: pucks deep, working it down low, and cycling it to the point.
We’ll see if/how Berube strikes a balance here throughout the season, particularly with his top-six units, as the elite forward talent driving offense and inner-slot-shot opportunities at the highest rates in the league has been a recipe for ample (regular season) offensive success with this group. It tipped too far away from any point-shot generation under Keefe (which had real consequences in the playoffs), but you also don’t want to overcorrect too far to the extent where you’re neutering the puck time and play-making freedom of the elite scoring talent up front.
5. The PK settled into the game in the second period with a massive 1:30+ 5-on-3 kill — strong work from Pontus Holmberg, Mitch Marner, Simon Benoit, and Chris Tanev — that was immediately followed by a big turning-point moment in the game. Marner released Oliver Ekman-Larsson from the box for a breakaway, the only clear-cut one of the game for the Leafs.
OEL almost tripped over the blue line, which sent him off course, and he could never get himself back in position to actually square up to the goalie, settling for a shot to the crest from a wider angle. It was an unfortunate moment amid a strong debut overall from OEL, who was a major factor in the offensive zone with a team-leading 11 individual shot attempts, several of which challenged the goalie or created second opportunities.
Shot attempts were a whopping 20-3 in the Leafs’ favour with OEL and Jake McCabe on the ice, and both were highly involved offensively (like OEL, McCabe also should’ve scored, particularly just after a power play on a nice setup by Max Domi, one of Domi’s few bright moments in the game. McCabe missed a half-empty net).
6. In a game where the Leafs hit the 48-shot mark and went to four power plays, they only registered five shots on goal on the man advantage. One was a nothing shot from an odd angle from Matthews at the start of the first power play (tried to catch the goalie out, but Montembeault was well aware), one was a broken play where it dribbled off of Matthews’ stick and into the goalie’s pad, and another was a hopeless floater out of frustration from the blue line by Rielly with zero traffic following a terrible, plodding sequence of sloppy drop passes in the neutral zone.
When a strong push to open the third period led to a chance to tie the game on the power play, the top unit again didn’t register a shot on goal; they were really slow and sloppy in their execution all game long. It’s early—there is a new PP coach at the helm, and they seemed to be thinking more than playing/executing—but there is so much talent on the unit and they’ve played together for so long that it’s not an adequate excuse tonight. It was noteworthy that the coaching staff pulled the top unit right around the minute mark a couple of times this evening; that was not a common sight in previous seasons.
On a related note, one of the metrics I regularly track with this Leafs’ power play is Auston Matthews‘ shot rate. It’s around the top 25 among players with an average of 2+ minutes of PP time per game over the last two seasons, and it drops off in the playoffs. Overall, it’s high but not high enough for the best shooter of this era. To me, Marc Savard has to find even more opportunities to set up his one-timer and to get him moving downhill to rip more pucks on net (not settling for odd-angle plays from the side of the net like tonight). If it were me in Savard’s place, it would be a goal to get Matthews closer to the Stamkos and Pastrnak universe in terms of PP shot rate this season and hopefully sustain it into the playoffs.
7. Marc Savard went with Max Pacioretty late on the 6-on-5 over some of his other options (Matthew Knies), and it almost paid off with Pacioretty’s setup from in front of the net to Auston Matthews, who almost always does more than what he did with the point-blank opportunity in the dying seconds. He fired it straight into the goalie’s crest, ending the Leafs’ shutout-less streak at 227 games.
Matthews, by the way, lapped the league with seven goals with the net empty last season on just 22 shots. It was one of those nights, including at least four goal posts from the Leafs (one crossbar from Matthews individually on what would’ve been a highlight-reel backhand finish with his back to the goal).
8. Anthony Stolarz could not have handled his first-ever season opener start any better than this 26-save effort. He had no chance on the one goal and was perfect otherwise. He is an even bigger man than Woll (by three inches!), and while I am no goalie expert, I am not sure he is all that far behind Woll technically or athletically.
Mentally, it was not an easy game for Stolarz; it was the Montembeault show at the other end, and Stolarz needed to keep the Leafs within one for 50 minutes of the game, including as the Leafs pressed to break the deadlock and conceded some counterattack opportunities. He made a lot of difficult, timely saves look pretty effortless. Amid another Woll injury controversy, the Leafs needed this type of start to calm the waters, and Stolarz stepped up big time.
9. Craig Berube is not going to get a ton of leeway from me if he’s regularly sitting a player on pace for 22 goals last season, one who was called a top-six player by the GM, who also rightfully called said player’s absence from the Bruins series an underrated and significant factor in the outcome (Bobby McMann). The Domi – Tavares – Nylander line is probably not the right mix of elements, and the numbers show as much when it comes to the Domi-Nylander combo from last season. McMann-Tavares dominated its minutes and outscored the opposition 14-5 at five-on-five last year (including a 6-2 edge with Nylander on the other wing). Outside of a few flashes of individual brilliance from Nylander and a few decent follow-up shifts after the top line set the table in the offensive zone, this line was the team’s worst tonight.
10. As for the other forward lines, the Auston Matthews line largely owned its minutes and put a ton of shots on goal; they dominated the opening shifts to the first and third periods and controlled the five-on-five play against Slafkovsky-Suzuki-Caufield, as you’d hope they would. That said, they need to break through and score at the end of the day, especially when they combine the team’s best left winger, best center, and best right winger on one line.
The Pontus Holmberg line drew a couple of penalties, attacked the net pretty well, and created some noteworthy chances. The fourth line won its minutes, created a couple of point-blank chances for Steven Lorentz, and drew a penalty as well via Lorentz’s work in front of the net.
Bottom-six scoring is a real storyline to keep an eye on with this team, but when they’re winning most of their shifts and drawing three penalties, the stars up the lineup have to come through and get the puck over the line, especially on a night like tonight against an inferior opponent.