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The Maple Leafs couldn’t sustain a strong start to the game as their five-game winning streak came to a halt with a 6-3 loss in Carolina.

Your game in 10:

1.   Carolina’s year-after-year command over the five-on-five shot attempts is a perennial feature of this era of Hurricanes hockey under Rod Brind’Amour. When watching them, it is immediately apparent how many low-to-high plays they direct at the net from the point off the back of their puck recoveries on the forecheck. Consider these numbers (from before tonight’s game, which only widened the canyon):

Shot Attempts by Top Six Defensemen at Five-on-Five

TeamGames Played by Top 6 D5v5 Shot Attempts by Top 6 D
Carolina240929
Toronto235599

The Canes added 30 more shot attempts from their D tonight at five-on-five (just seven hit the net) to the Leafs‘ 15. Where the Canes play their system and stick to it with remarkable uniformity, the Leafs understandably lean more on a talented forward group with several bona fide superstars to drive their offense.

From the Leafs‘ perspective, you do wonder where the right balance lies and what Craig Berube truly prefers in terms of the ideal mix of low-to-high plays for point shots with traffic versus the forwards hanging onto pucks to make plays or the defensemen sending it back down low to the forwards (or handing it off to a forward rotating up high). You definitely don’t want to take the sticks out of the Leafs‘ elite players’ hands. But you do want a little more offense from the defense, less perimeter play with the puck, and more dirty goals/chaos at playoff time, when you’re facing good defensive teams who pack the house with five and the officiating changes.

2.   Early in the game, the Leafs were able to exploit the predictability for some quick-strike offensive opportunity, as some Leaf pressure/Hurricane mistakes at the points led to turnovers.

One minute in, John Tavares closed down and jumped on a fanned puck by Dmitry Orlov, leading to a William Nylander chance on the break that rang the iron. Six minutes later, Nylander stripped another puck off Orlov and went in on a breakaway (he went for a forehand-backhand deke and was stonewalled).

On the other side of the TV timeout, Jalen Chatfield fanned on a puck at the point, and Nylander went on his third breakaway in seven minutes, this time correctly choosing to shoot and burying the 2-0 goal to snap his seven-game goal-scoring drought.

3.   That Nylander goal came after the Leafs opened the scoring less than two minutes into the game. It was a great shift from Steven Lorentz, who won multiple races/battles to recover pucks before Max Domi picked out Mr. Scratch & Score, Nick Robertson, in the slot, where Robertson lifted it over the glove.

After one point in his previous 21, Lorentz now has four points in his last eight games. He isn’t Bobby McMann offensively, clearly, but the element of size, speed, and forechecking he provides, as a complement to Domi’s playmaking and Robertson’s finishing, creates a somewhat similar line dynamic in terms of the combination of elements. The trio only played five minutes and change together at five-on-five due to the issues up the lineup leading to Craig Berube’s line blending as the game wore on, but they scored the opening goal, outshot the opposition 4-2, and edged the unblocked shot attempts 7-4.

4.   Halfway through the first period, the score was 2-0 Leafs and the shots were 8-4 Leafs, coming off of a dominant shift by the McMann – Tavares – Nylander line. All four lines had contributed in some fashion to the team’s positive momentum, and it was a dream start on the road against a dominant home team (the Hurricanes are 16-5-0 on home ice).

That last stat on Carolina’s home record and all of the history of this team under Brind’Amour speaks to the fact that they very rarely take nights off or pack it in. They were always going to keep coming with their aggressive forecheck and execute the repetition of what they do so effectively.

In the second half of the period, the Canes started to turn some pucks over in the offensive zone (one by OEL/Lorentz, one by Timmins), and you could see the tilting of the ice in Carolina’s favour gradually start to unfold. One bad bounce off of Robertson’s stick off a point shot landed perfectly for Eric Robinson to finish off.

It could’ve/should’ve been 3-0 Leafs, but now it was a 2-1 game.

5.   The Canes won the subsequent center-ice faceoff, dumped another puck in deep, recovered it, and worked it low to high for a point shot, which they recovered down low via Andrei Svechnikov.

From there, Chris Tanev and Auston Matthews were both deceived by Svechnikov’s cut back down below the goal line, opening a passing lane in front with Jordan Staal left open. It appeared Matthews thought he should leave the middle to support his D in an attempt to help kill the cycle, anticipating Svechnikov was turning up the wall. With Matthews taking himself out of the play, Matthew Knies didn’t sense Staal slipping in unmarked, while Mitch Marner did see him and came across to help but couldn’t get positioning or grab Staal’s stick.

It was now a tie game with two goals inside 16 seconds of each other, and shots went from 8-4 Leafs to 11-10 Carolina pretty quickly. The Leafs then took a penalty after Max Domi turned a puck over on the half-wall, leading to a Morgan Rielly trip.

6.   The start of the second period saw the Leafs go on the power play, concede a shorty immediately, and tie it back up on the same PP, all within 1:11.

Naturally, a lot of attention surrounding the Canes’ shorthanded goal will fixate on the downsides of a five-forward setup as two forwards (Nylander and Marner) defended a rush poorly for a goal against. To be fair, first and foremost, Nylander didn’t make a solid play on the puck in the neutral zone initially, leading to the turnover and the 2v1; that’s not really a “five forward” issue.

From there, part of the comfort the Leafs’ coaching staff probably feels with the risk of the five-forward setup is that they believe Marner (it’s usually Marner) is a reliable enough forward to manage things reasonably as the last man back. Unfortunately, he really overplayed it on the 2v1 after the Nylander fumble. It was Jordan Martinook carrying the puck on his backhand side. All Marner needed to do was sit on the pass and let Woll take care of the shooter.

Craig Berube stuck with the five forwards, and it paid off after a point shot from Marner with two Leafs at the net was converted. Matthew Knies, the fifth forward who moves onto the top unit when the Leafs drop Rielly off of it, was at the net causing problems and drawing the attention of a defender when Matthews batted down the puck and sprawled out to finish it off.

7.   The Leafs conceding the 4-3 goal a few minutes later was one of the two major turning points in the game (the first being the two goals inside 16 seconds in the first period).

Somehow, a pretty simple situation for Benoit and Oliver Ekman-Larsson to defend inside the defensive blue line against someone named Juha Jaaksa and Jackson Blake turned into Blake breaking in on Woll. OEL misjudged his spacing and was slow on the pivot as Blake took a few strides in and could shoot without much duress.

This is also one where it’s not “on” the goalie, but it’s not a superstar breaking in, and the shot wasn’t exactly ripped. It’s a battle with the shooter Woll often wins to bail out his team, but he got beat by a sort of shuffled half-shot through the five-hole.

Regarding OEL’s struggles in this game, it was interesting to hear Berube reference “balance” on the pairs when discussing the decision to move Rielly next to Tanev. To me, it does the opposite of creating balance when Jake McCabe is already out of the lineup. I didn’t mind seeing it, and Rielly-Tanev is definitely a pairing we need to see more of throughout the second half of the season. Still, the big question is whether the other pairings are strong enough to survive when Rielly-Tanev are together, especially with McCabe out. The answer to this question, for this one game anyway, was a clear no.

OEL played 20+ minutes tonight and started off on a pairing with Philippe Myers, who has been a nice surprise this year but is a #6/7. With McCabe out, Rielly-Tanev means the Leafs have two pairs consisting of bottom-pairing defensemen if we consider OEL more of a #5 in an ideal world, Benoit a #6, Timmins a #6/7, and Myers a #6/7. Unsurprisingly, given how the game played out, we eventually saw Berube/Van Ryn put the pairs in a blender.

8.   The second period was pretty ugly statistically from the Leafs’ perspective: 27-7 in shot attempts and 9-4 in shots on goal for the Hurricanes at five-on-five. Their power play scored but also got scored on, then didn’t capitalize late in the period with a chance to tie it up heading into the third period.

Two penalties in a six-minute span coming off of the 4-3 Carolina goal really didn’t help the Leafs’ momentum. McMann was angry after taking a hit and took an undisciplined retaliatory penalty (which led to him missing a shift). Matthews took one of those frustrating slashing calls in this league where it’s only a penalty because the stick broke. Woll bounced back with a huge save on Sebastian Aho to keep the Leafs in the game after a seam pass to the back post, and the PK otherwise stood firm.

In the final five minutes, there was a shift where the Canes racked up several of their shot attempts in a prolonged, messy own-zone sequence for the Leafs. After surviving the two kills, the Leafs sent out a Robertson, Domi, and Nylander line with an OEL-Timmins pairing for a defensive-zone draw. It came out of a TV timeout, too. I couldn’t begin to grasp the logic of assembling this five-man unit for such a situation. It ended in a review of a possible goal-scoring play after Eric Robinson jammed away at a puck on a wraparound.

After a trip on Knies, a late second-period Leafs power play created a good look for Nylander that he couldn’t convert and a scramble play that Tavares couldn’t convert, then conceded a few more rushes against, one of which led to Seth Jarvis hitting the post.

9.   Conceding a 5-3 goal just a few seconds into the third period was a backbreaker for the Leafs, and it was a mid-slot redirect by Jordan Staal that went straight through Woll. Matthews went to block it with his skates as Staal freely tipped it in the slot, and it’s not an outright soft goal past the netminder. But it was another makeable one Woll didn’t come up with.

“Their goalie outplayed me a bit, and that was the difference in the game,” Woll said candidly after the loss.

There haven’t been too many of those this season (or since Woll broke the league in general), but for all of the Canes’ shot attempts in the game, the Leafs put 33 shots on net to Carolina’s 34.

The Leafs didn’t totally go away at 5-3 down. Berube mixed his lines up to mainly run the following:

Knies – Matthews – Nylander
McMann – Tavares – Marner
Robertson – Domi – Kampf
Lorentz – Dewar – Holmberg

McMann, Tavares, and Marner generated a couple of good offensive-zone shifts, including one where Marner nearly set up Tavares at the back post for a goal; Tavares appeared to be hooked on the hands (no call) and couldn’t elevate the puck.

Robertson had two good looks to add to his total. One came after Lorentz was shoved on top of the goalie, and a prone Pyotr Kochetkov made a save he knew nothing about. The other was a good look where Robertson tried his deceptive release along the ice, but Kochetkov got the better of him.

With the Leafs unable to cut the deficit to one, an early goalie pull (with around four minutes to go) only yielded a Matthews turnover for an immediate game-ending empty-net goal.

10.   A lot of attention will land on the -6 night for Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner (every single Hurricane forward and defenseman was on for at least one goal vs. those two except the Aho line, so that’s 15 out of 18 skaters). The number 15:32 grabbed my attention the most. It was Matthews’ total ice time, which was sixth among forwards and the lowest in a regular-season game for Matthews since 2022-23.

I’d have loved to hear Berube’s thoughts on the top line’s game in general and the TOI figure for Matthews specifically, but the question wasn’t asked after the game. If it’s a case of ice time doing the talking with a bit of accountability at the top, I’m all for it; post-game, Berube mentioned the need to protect the middle better defensively, and Matthews was at the center of a few goals against that match the description. We’ll see how the top line responds on Saturday, knowing they’ve had a really good thing going since Matthews’ return.

Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Game Highlights w/ Joe Bowen & Jim Ralph

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