For the second straight Saturday, the Maple Leafs returned to Scotiabank Arena after winning comfortably on the road only to lose at home in a back-to-back.
The difference is that the Leafs actually played reasonably well this time overall, but glaring, untimely errors and losing the special teams and goaltending battles sunk them in the end.
Your game in 10:
1. The Leafs came out flying in this game, creating a ton of chances early. The John Tavares line started the game and just missed connecting in the slot. On the next shift, Matthew Knies found William Nylander across the slot, where Nylander had time and space but was denied by Logan Thompson.
At the end of that shift, the Leafs gave up a scoring opportunity the other way, as Oliver Ekman-Larsson turned it over on the right side (it’s starting to sound like a broken record here) on a retrieval that led to a clean Tom Wilson look. The Capitals also had a slap pass play from the point deflected just wide afterward.
Just 3:14 in, the Leafs broke the ice in this game with the type of goal they have been trying to score more of. After dumping the puck in, Tavares got in on the forecheck, and Max Pacioretty came in as the F2 to win the battle, control the puck, and pass it to the point for a shooting opportunity. It was somewhat similar to what Pacioretty did against the Red Wings the night before on Marner’s hat-trick goal (although last night, he skated it in himself, then curled in).
Simon Benoit took a good one-timer to the net, and Tavares — who started the play on the forecheck — went to the net. The puck deflected in off Tavares’ chest for his 18th goal of the season.
That’s a nice sequence from the Leafs, one they’re looking to regularly build into their game — forechecking, getting it to the point, and going to the net.
Tavares 18th of the Season vs Capitals courtesy of @Bonsie1951 and @Jim_Ralph. pic.twitter.com/OJu1fuGK3z
— Maple Leafs Hotstove (@LeafsNews) December 29, 2024
2. Just over a minute and a half later, the Leafs gave it right back.
On Connor Dewar’s first shift of the game, he turned it over on the wall in the Leafs’ end, leading to the aforementioned slap-pass play. On his second shift, Dewar fanned on a pass up the middle; Hendrix Lapierre picked it up and quickly sprung Andrew Mangiapane on a 2v1 counterattack.
It was a really bad start from Dewar, and it simply can’t happen when he’s a fourth-liner who produces next to nothing offensively. The pass was high risk from the outset. Watching it live, you didn’t want him to go there with the puck in the first place. He also fanned on it, compounding matters.
Conor Timmins played the pass, as he generally should, but Benoit did pretty well to get back and take the backdoor play away. Timmins probably could have stepped up a bit more to challenge the shooter, but the play developed really fast.
Mangiapane kept the puck and shot it through Murray, who was not centered in his net properly. It’s a 2v1, but it’s not a good goal against for the goaltender. You’d like to see a save there, considering the shot wasn’t particularly well-placed.
3. The Capitals got some life from tying the game and started to do a better job breaking out and generating some zone time. Four minutes after tying it, they took the lead.
The Caps’ fourth line of Duhaime-Dowd-Raddysh hemmed in the Leafs’ third line by working the points, and the Leafs completely sagged off in coverage. Look at the coverage moments before the Capitals scored:
Four of the five Leafs are well below the top of the circle, packed in tight together. The Capitals had all day at the top of the zone and on both flanks, and this came during five-on-five hockey. It’s one thing to give the opposition the perimeter, but this is an absurd amount of time and space, and it’s starting to happen regularly inside the Leafs’ defensive zone coverage.
Again, the goal itself was one Murray should save. There wasn’t much of a screen, and it wasn’t exactly off the bar and in. It’s a bad goal past the goalie, one that was the result of bad defensive coverage by the Leafs.
4. The pace of the first period was really high both ways, and it’s clear even just the three-day break at Christmas for the Leafs did them some good. They had several chances to tie the game in the first period — most notably, Nylander was robbed in front all alone on a play that looked like a goal at first. He again was stonewalled on a breakaway.
Logan Thompson is a southpaw goalie who catches with his right hand, as is Washington’s other goalie, Charlie Lindgren. Nylander missed a breakaway on Lindgren last game, and this time, Thompson rejected him. It feels like the southpaw dynamic is throwing him off a bit.
The Leafs ended the period with the better chances but gave up more zone time and battled some sequences where they were pinned in for too long.
5. The start of the second period was much slower than the first period, but Washington was generally controlling the play. The Leafs did put a few shots on net, but everything was one and done, as Toronto failed to sustain any offensive-zone pressure. The Capitals were able to hem the Leafs in a bit more, albeit they were also creating very little in the process.
A Pontus Holmberg shift about five minutes into the period really tilted the ice. First, he failed to come up with a loose puck in the neutral zone after Nylander created a turnover against Chychrun off the Leafs’ blue line. Nylander and Knies still managed to get off during the sequence, but when Lorentz and Dewar jumped on, Lorentz hit Holmberg for a breakout pass in the middle of the ice. Holmberg just missed receiving it, resulting in another turnover that the Capitals put in deep, leading to a 3:20 second shift for Holmberg and a clean walk-in for John Carlson, who ripped the puck off the post.
I get why the Leafs are running Holmberg on the second line — they want to keep the other three lines intact — but Holmberg is way out of his depth. By nature of playing on that line, he’s also playing way more than he should. Holmberg was sixth amongst Leafs forwards in time on ice in this game, ahead of all of Domi, McMann, and Robertson, and he offers the team nothing offensively, especially compared to those three.
If Matthews’ return is imminent, fair enough — it’s a natural substitution — but if he’s not, this is unsustainable.
6. Often, when a team tilts the ice but doesn’t score — in this case, the Caps ripped it off the post — a good scoring chance is coming the other way.
The Leafs buried theirs. The Capitals got overaggressive off the rush as all three forwards went deep, along with Matt Roy. The Leafs recovered the puck, Marner backhanded it up ice, and Max Domi and Bobby McMann were off to the races from there. Those are two of the Leafs’ faster forwards, and they raced up ice to ensure they broke on a 2v1.
Domi has been shooting more lately and was defended a lot tighter on the rush this time, opening up an easy passing lane for him to thread the puck through. McMann was stopped on the initial shot, but he made a strong “fundamental” play by stopping in the crease and sticking with it, banging home the rebound in the process.
McMann 10th of the Season vs Capitals courtesy of @Bonsie1951 and @Jim_Ralph. pic.twitter.com/mrwq6QplDO
— Maple Leafs Hotstove (@LeafsNews) December 29, 2024
That’s McMann’s 10th goal of the season, making him the fifth Leafs player to reach double digits in goals.
7. Almost immediately after tying it, the Leafs gave it right back again. This time, the Capitals’ goal came 1:43 after scoring.
On the initial play, Nylander had the puck and was turning up ice in the Leafs zone but was spun around on a play that should have been called a penalty. It wasn’t, and from there, it was a calamity of errors, lost battles, and failures to get the puck out by Toronto. It culminated in the puck bouncing to Matthew Knies in the slot, where he lost the battle to get it out.
As has been the case since he returned from injury, Knies engaged in a stick battle rather than using his body to make a physical play and box out possession of the puck. Every battle is a stick battle for Knies right now, and he’s supposed to be a power forward on this team. If we compare it to Tom Wilson in this game, Wilson was running around lining the Leafs up all night (including laying a big hit on Nylander later in the game).
After the turnover, the Capitals quickly turned it into a one-timer in the high slot. The puck bounced off the boards to a pinching Rasmus Sandin, who made a nice cross-crease pass to Nic Dowd at the backdoor, where Dowd had an empty net to fire it into.
That’s five goals in his last five games in Toronto for Dowd, who always strangely produces in this building. It was also Dowd who took the penalty that led to the Leafs tying the game in Washington.
8. The Leafs did create some chances to tie it again throughout the rest of the period — most notably, a Marner toe drag in the slot allowed him to walk right in, but he shot the puck high and wide.
They also went to their first power play of the night. Marner and Rielly both took pretty good one-timers with traffic, and Tavares dug out a puck in the slot and took a wrister that he couldn’t squeak through Thompson.
Through 40 minutes, the Leafs were up in scoring chances 14-9, but odd-man rush chances were 5-1 for Washington, and the Leafs scored on their only one. The Leafs had trouble counter-attacking up ice but generally managed the game well, except right after they scored (twice).
9. A big storyline in this game was the special teams battle, which came to a head in the third period.
The Leafs were down 3-2 going into the third and went to a power play just two minutes into the final frame, their second of the game. They lost the faceoff and struggled to gain the zone. Berube pulled off the top unit with just under half the power play still to go, keeping Nylander on.
This doesn’t really make sense to me. Nylander was bad on the entries, then turned it over, leading to the Washington clear. But everyone else has to leave the ice except for him?
The Leafs were on a back-to-back, Murray was in the net playing a questionable game, Matthews was out, and Berube took off the top unit in the third period down a goal. The Leafs went 0/2 on the power play in the game.
A little over halfway through the period, the Leafs took a penalty, and the Capitals scored. After both Marner and Tanev failed to clear the puck, Washington got the puck at the point with time and space. Chychrun ripped a shot, and Tom Wilson applied a perfect screen just on top of the crease; the puck went off of Wilson and in.
That was, for all intents and purposes, the hockey game. It took the air out of the Leafs, as it never felt like they were coming back from there.
10. The Leafs pulled their goalie, but all it really accomplished was Alex Ovechkin’s 869th career goal on an empty netter (which he poached).
Truthfully, this wasn’t a bad game for the Leafs. If Washington is supposed to be one of the best teams in the East, Toronto should actually feel pretty good about it, all things considered. Logan Thompson was excellent in the Washington net. The Leafs outshot the Capitals, created a ton of high-quality looks, and clearly really missed Matthews and one of Stolarz or Woll (to say nothing about them playing the night before and facing a fully rested Capitals team).
In tough circumstances, the Leafs were right in this game but lacked the execution and lost the special teams and goaltending battles.
Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts
