The Maple Leafs were flat from the first shift, shut out, and dominated at home by the Ottawa Senators in a listless performance.
The Senators scored right off the bat, could have scored a half-dozen goals in the first, built up a three-goal lead early in the second period, and the Leafs never pushed back. It was perhaps the worst showing by the Leafs this season, with only a decent night from goalie Anthony Stolarz keeping the scoreline respectable. It was a night to forget at Scotiabank Arena.
Your game in 10:
1. Here was Craig Berube’s message ahead of this game:
“We can’t give them freebies tonight. We have to make them work for everything. We have to make them earn everything they get. We can’t be giving up odd-man rushes against these guys.”
Well, just over 30 seconds into the game, William Nylander tried to guide it ahead to Bobby McMann at the offensive blue line, but the Senators’ Artem Zub quickly chopped the puck off his stick. Morgan Rielly had jumped up and was parallel to Nylander on the entry, leaving the Leafs exposed when the puck pinballed out of the zone for an odd-man opportunity against. Claude Giroux drew in Oliver Ekman-Larson and then passed to Josh Norris in the slot, who ripped a shot by Anthony Stolarz.
It was an ominous start that foreshadowed the remaining 59:19 left to play. A sloppy, half-hearted play by Nylander was ruthlessly exploited by a hungry Senators team ready to play balls to the wall.
2. Sometimes you see an early goal go in, and you think, “Okay, still a lot of game to play; let’s wait for the team to get settled into the flow of the game.” Unfortunately, the Leafs never did settle in.
Conor Timmins and Simon Benoit were on the ice when the Leafs were overwhelmed by the Ottawa forecheck of Michael Amadio and Adam Gaudette, creating a pair of point-blank chances right out in front that Stolarz kept out.
The Senators were all over the Leafs in the early minutes of this game, firing shot after shot on Stolarz. The Leafs were struggling to win any puck races or battles that would allow them to find their footing in the game.
The problem compounded when the Leafs were forced to go on a kill 5:49 into the period, with Pontus Holmberg called for a sloppy trip in the corner of the offensive zone at the end of a long shift. Toronto killed this man advantage off, but not in the way that wrested control of momentum back over the game and provided the defending team with a shot in the arm back at full strength. Rather, it was one of those “hanging on for dear life” kills — frantic and frenetic, several great saves from Stolarz, and hurried clears. Not even halfway through the first period, the Leafs felt lucky to only be down by one.
3. Shots on goal had snowballed to a 13-2 Ottawa edge 11:38 into the first(!) when the Maple Leafs drew a penalty and an opportunity to turn the script of the game around. A trip by Nick Cousins on the offensive zone forecheck felled Timmins, sending the Maple Leafs to the power play.
This was one of the few bright spots for the Leafs in this game. They zipped the puck around well and purposefully, urgently getting pucks into the middle of the ice — in one case, quick one-touch passes from Nylander to Matthew Knies to Mitch Marner to Rielly to set up an A+ look from the slot. Ottawa goalie Linus Ullmark came out of the net to challenge the defender and make a good save.
Later on in the power play, Nylander had a rebound try that Ullmark kept out, and the Senators survived the kill with the 1-0 lead. Still, the Leafs put five shots on goal and attempted even more. It had the potential to be a momentum grabber.
4. The Leafs couldn’t carry the momentum over back at evens. The Senators continued to pepper Stolarz with shots while the ice was tilted against the Leafs.
Toronto was given a second opportunity to flip the script with another power play opportunity later in the first period when the same two characters reconnected for the same infraction: Nick Cousins tripping Timmins, this time at the offensive blue line after a slick, confident move with the puck by Timmins.
This wasn’t a “bad” power play, as the Leafs continued to move it around pretty well, but the Leafs also didn’t create a chance as good as the Rielly one on the first PP. Their best look went to Rielly again, but he hesitated and didn’t get a clean shot through as the shot blocker recovered in time to get his stick in the lane.
It could’ve been much, much worse for the Leafs in the first. Stolarz made 16 first-period saves, several of them of the high-danger variety. The Senators were clearly the faster and hungrier team, and the Leafs were nowhere near as structured defensively as their recent wins on home ice. But Stolarz had provided an opportunity for the Leafs to clean it up and get back on track in the game.
5. It never happened. The Leafs gave up another early goal in a period, this time a little bit later than the first one, but they didn’t escape the first 3.5 minutes unscathed for the second period in a row.
Stolarz made a shoulder save on a Senators point shot, followed by a rebound popping out into the high slot. Rielly attempted to clear it but didn’t get enough purchase on it, as the puck popped into the air and was gloved by Thomas Chabot before it could exit the zone. Meanwhile, Max Domi had begun flying the zone and couldn’t close the gap in his recovery back to the front of the net, as Tim Stützle was left all alone and buried.
A second Senators goal felt inevitable in the run of play, but the actual goal was another fairly cheap one from the Leafs’ perspective. In their recent wins, they had been very patient in their approach offensively, prioritizing numbers below the puck and giving up nothing easy to the opposition. This was a case of cheating for offense with a poorly-calculated gamble.
This was the first 5v5 goal against this season for the Knies—Domi—Marner line, but they haven’t scored one, and they’re now below 38% in shot attempts and expected goals. It’s no surprise that Berube moved away from them in the second period.
6. The 2-0 Senators lead didn’t last long…. because it was quickly bumped up to 3-0. On a Senators’ rimmed clearance attempt that created a bobbling puck on the wall, Jake McCabe pinched in and couldn’t make a solid play on it, and Michael Amadio slipped by him for a 2v1 with another former Leaf, Noah Gregor, with only Ekman-Larsson back (again). Amadio kept it all the way, holding the puck and firing it by Stolarz to make it 3-0. It’s very rich to criticize Stolarz for anything tonight, but he was beaten on his short side on this one.
The end result was fair on the balance of play, but there were also two Senators goals off odd-man rushes and another that was a bit of a gift after the Leafs blew the zone, only adding to the frustration tonight.
7. The rest of the second period was fairly lifeless and uninteresting from the Leafs. Timmins went to the box for an interference penalty, but the penalty kill didn’t last long when the referees sent Brady Tkachuk off for interference after he and Connor Dewar were tangled up. I did think that David Kämpf had a couple of nice moments on the half-minute PK, but that’s all I noted.
The 4v4 play and brief carryover power play didn’t lead to much, but Nylander and Domi did hook up to get one A+ chance right before the expiration of the period. Nylander grabbed possession of the puck behind the net and flipped it in front to Domi at point-blank range, but Domi didn’t get full wood on the puck and slid it along the ice, right off the toe of Ullmark’s skate. Domi looks like a player who is getting a little antsy and gripping the stick tightly amid a 10-game pointless slump and a 17-game goal-scoring slump to start the season.
Natural Stat Trick recorded the shot attempts as 54-22 in Ottawa’s favour at 5v5 through two periods. Scoring chances at 5v5 were 23-9, and high-danger chances were 9-2. Really ugly.
8. The third period could mostly be described as “going through the motions.” Neither team generated a single high-danger chance at 5v5, and there was a total of 0.18 combined expected goals generated in 11 minutes of 5v5 time in the period.
The Leafs came out of the intermission with the Nylander, Marner, and Tavares line ready to go, but my notes on events in the first 5-7 minutes of the period are more notable for the lack of any real notes at all. Almost nothing happened during this period, as no push was forthcoming from the Leafs.
It is noteworthy that the Leafs have scored just six five-on-five goals when trailing this season, which is 31st in the NHL. As a per-60 rate, they’re currently ranked as the worst team in the NHL at scoring when trailing at five-on-five. They were a top-five team in this category last season.
Under Sheldon Keefe, the regular-season hockey may have been more chancey, but the team was rarely out of a game. Granted, the Leafs are without the best goal-scorer in the world at the moment, but they also have some work to do to figure out the formula for playing tighter hockey while accessing another gear offensively when they need it.
9. The most interesting development of the third was nothing with an effect on the scoreboard but a bit of a skirmish that erupted when Stolarz came out to play a Senators dump-in and collided with a hard-charging Shane Pinto. Ekman-Larsson, to his credit, defended his goalie and jumped on top of Pinto as a fracas ensued, sending both Pinto and OEL off with matching minors. That moment was a brief flash of life and could’ve opened up some extra ice for the chasing team, but the 4v4 play didn’t lead to anything, and the game remained 3-0.
The Leafs pulled the goalie with 4.5 minutes remaining and never did get scored on, but they also didn’t come up all that close to scoring. They held quite a bit of zone time and took some perimeter shots, but nothing was super threatening, and Ottawa took a few shots at the yawning cage from center ice/the defensive blue line. They missed each time before Knies was called for a cross-check on defenseman Nick Jensen with 1:28 left, which killed all the remaining regulation time.
Ottawa mostly played keep-away with this power play, and that was all she wrote for this one.
10. This was a completely putrid game from the Maple Leafs. The competitiveness and defensive effort in the first half of the game were awful. They deserved to concede several more than they did, with only Stolarz standing in the way of a more lopsided number. The offense never got going at 5v5, creating a grand total of 0.7 expected goals in 42 minutes of time at that strength tonight. Yes, they generated some encouraging looks on the power play, but you can’t be that anemic at the phase that constitutes ~2/3 to ~3/4 of the game and expect a real chance to win.
Craig Berube’s postgame comments summed it up well; the Senators wanted it more than the Leafs. It’s absolutely what it looked like: one team playing in what is always their Stanley Cup (Ottawa facing big brother Toronto), and the other with only a passing interest in showing up to work on a Tuesday night in November.
I can’t remember a single good moment from nearly half the forwards on the roster, and the stars were largely MIA in this one. The broader issue of the lack of five-on-five offense predates this lame effort, though, and is one that Berube and the Leafs need to find some answers for, with or without Matthews.
Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts
