The Maple Leafs couldn’t generate enough offensively and suffered a few bad breaks in their own end as they fell to 0-2-0 in the season series against the Ottawa Senators.

Your game in 10:

1.   A clear indication of the Leafs‘ bottom-six situation in this game (i.e., a dog’s breakfast), Craig Berube gave his top line three shifts in the first 3:30 of the first period.

It wasn’t a great start by the team overall, as the Senators owned more of the zone time in the first few minutes, but on the top line’s third shift of the night, the Leafs scored their first and last goal of the game.

It was a nice start on the top line for Bobby McMann. His pressure on the forecheck forced a hurried, off-the-mark pass by Senators’ defenseman Tyler Kleven into the neutral zone that the Leafs recovered. McMann took a pass the other way, fired the Leafs’ first shot on goal, and recovered the rebound. When Oliver Ekman-Larsson cycled it back down low for Mitch Marner behind the net, McMann got himself lost in the high slot, took a nice feed from Marner, and buried a knuckler past a scrambling Anton Forsberg.


2.   I’m aware that McMann scored on a Marner setup. Still, I can’t say I fully understand the logic of continuing to hand the Matthews-Marner duo the team’s best LWer even when all of Matthew Knies, Max Pacioretty, and John Tavares are out injured, making it really difficult to form more than one credible line in tonight’s circumstances.

Why can’t Matthews-Marner carry Max Domi on the LW for a game or two? (I’d maybe even consider Pontus Holmberg up there if they went McMann – Domi – Nylander, although Domi’s struggles make this tough).

The McMann-Nylander combination has been a serious threat — outscoring the opposition 10-4 at five-on-five — but the Leafs couldn’t find two lines to rub together tonight. They spotted Nylander into different slots up and down the lineup without giving him a steady, regular top-six linemate he could create with, which McMann provides. Nylander did his best with what he had to work with, including nearly 4.5 minutes of five-on-five time with David Kampf and Nick Robertson as the game wore on, with a 9-3 edge in shot attempts for the Leafs in those minutes.

Berube did find a few spots to throw together Nylander-Matthews-Marner, including late in the first period, but the only shot on goal in the 1:19 of ice time those three saw together was from Brady Tkachuk on a 2v1 for Ottawa.


3.   That said, to skip ahead, if Matthews was going to have this kind of an off-night under those injury circumstances, then it probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway. 

Matthews fired one shot on goal and two shot attempts in 22:47, and the shot came with 13 minutes left in the game (it hit center-crest after a nice exchange between him and Marner on the cycle). Travis Green matched his Shane Pinto-led third line against Matthews’ line — 13:27 head-to-head at five-on-five — and shots were 4-1 Senators in those minutes.

When Domi-Holmberg-Nylander, Lorentz-Kampf-Robertson, and Quillan-Minten-Reaves are the other three lines, that type of outcome in the Pinto line vs. Matthews line matchup made the path to creating enough offense quite narrow for the Leafs tonight.


4.    Immediately after the 1-0 goal, the Jacob QuillanFraser MintenRyan Reaves fourth line — as strange of a combination as you’ll see the Leafs roll out this season — got stuck in their own end on their first shift, leading to a Jake McCabe penalty.

After a dangerous first minute of the man advantage for the Senators — Simon Benoit might have saved a goal by getting his stick on a shot at the back door — the Leafs saw out the second half of the kill smoothly.

On the fourth line’s second shift of the game after the kill, they got a puck in deep, but McCabe turned it over at the line for a partial breakaway for Nick Cousins. That was immediately followed by a wince-inducing collision between Cousins and the debuting Quillan in the neutral zone.

I know Cousins can be a sneaky dirty player who probably isn’t above leaving a leg in to take a piece of a guy when he’s missing a hit. Slow-motion replays always make it easier to infer nefarious intent, too. But it did happen really fast in real-time, and Quillan tried to slip the hit at the last second, just as Cousins tried to plant shoulder into his chest. Honestly, I have a hard time reading malice into this one upon further review, but you be the judge.

If there was malice to it, Cousins got the worst of it and didn’t return to the game, while Quillan shook it off.


5.   Quillan played just 5:21, 3:34 of which took place in the first period, and he didn’t see a shift after around the midway point of the second period. His final appearance was a lengthy own-zone shift that started with a neutral-zone faceoff against the Senators’ second line. Travis Hamonic jumped in off the point on Quillan’s side of the zone and cut out in front for a chance in tight on Woll.

Quillan’s best moment came late in the first period on a shift with Robertson and Kampf; he helped force a turnover and then recovered a puck afterward. There wasn’t much to go on, but he moves well, with a solid build and a good motor. I’m curious to see where his development tracks in the next year or two.

Minten and Reaves saw just one more shift after that mid-second-period sequence; it was 26 seconds long (spent inside their own zone) and came with Lorentz in Quillan’s place. The fourth line didn’t exist tonight, for all intents and purposes.


6.   Halfway through the first period, the Senators tied the game at 1-1 on a 4-on-3 power play after a sloppy tripping penalty by Pontus Holmberg and a bad break for David Kampf, who blocked a shot and broke his stick during the kill. It became four Senators versus McCabe and Tanev when Stutzle scored one a one-timer that took a slight deflection off of McCabe’s stick blade, off the short-side post, and in.

Both goals against prominently featured bad breaks for the Leafs, but to state the obvious, they opened themselves up to losing this way by scoring one goal.

Between some Domi-Tkachuk / Reaves-Tkachuk rough stuff, the Cousins-Quillan incident, and two early goals, you definitely wouldn’t have known this game was going to be one of the most boring of the season 11-12 minutes into the first period. The second period isn’t even worth writing about; it was a complete non-event.


7.   The Leafs’ best segment of this game came in the third period in the build-up to the game-losing goal. They owned 71% of the shot attempts in the final frame, which didn’t all come after falling behind 2-1. They largely dictated play from the start of the period, with the game still at 1-1. They got off the perimeter a couple of times, getting pucks and bodies to the net for a few goal-mouth scrambles they couldn’t quite cash in on.

One of the top line’s offensive-zone shifts shortly before Ottawa’s 2-1 goal against was a really frustrating watch, though. McCabe fired a dump-in bank pass off the end boards for Marner to skate onto with an edge on the defender, but he faked a shot and skated around the net. Shortly afterward, Matthews came out from behind the net with a clear opportunity to drive into the net-front just as Marner was timing his arrival at the top of the crease. Matthews instead handed it off to OEL on the cycle, and the team skated around the perimeter for a while before OEL fired a nothing shot with no traffic in front for a change of possession.

There were some shifts in this game — and this period — where the Leafs were working hard to generate zone time but didn’t have enough talent on the ice to actually make a play or get a puck off the wall into a productive area of the ice. By contrast, this was a frustrating example where the elite talent had openings and just didn’t take the puck to the net with the game on the line in the third period.


8.   The game-losing goal involved another tough break for the Leafs. Simon Benoit (starting in the offensive zone) and Philippe Myers could’ve played this sequence better — it was kind of a strange pairing to throw together in general, and they played just 12-13 minutes total — but the forward support coming back was solid covering the front of the net. McMann got back to take Pinto’s stick away at the back post, and Marner got his stick on Highmore’s pass across, but a couple of strange bounces later, it trickled over the goal line despite Marner’s efforts to keep it out.

The Leafs’ initial response down 2-1 wasn’t a bad one. Nylander found Robertson for a decent look on a rare rush opportunity for the Leafs in the game; Robertson tried his go-to five-hole shot along the ice to no avail.

The newly-formed Domi-Holmberg-Lorentz line generated two spells of significant pressure; one ended with a shot sent disappointingly wide by OEL for a clearance, and the other led to two shots by Domi from the slot, followed by a loose puck hovering right on top of the crease with the goalie down and out. Lorentz and Holmberg each fanned on it amidst the chaos.

For those keeping track, Domi has gone from getting bumped out of the C position while the team runs Holmberg – Kampf – Minten (!) down the middle, to moving up onto 2LW due to Knies’ injury, to getting shifted away from 2LW in favour of Robertson when down a goal in this game. This season has really gone south for him, and it’s especially hard felt when the team’s depth scoring is strained due to injuries. Domi needs to find a way to turn things around down the stretch. It’s not for a lack of opportunity.


9.   The Leafs then couldn’t get their goalie pulled early enough.

The top line couldn’t establish the zone with around three minutes left. They were jammed up multiple times and needed to change on the fly for the Domi-Holmberg-Lorentz line. By the time the Leafs got their big guns out and Woll came out of the net, there was less than 1:30 left in the game, and Marner and Matthews combined to turn it over twice for clearances.

The Keystone Cops routine continued from there. In the neutral zone, OEL fired a pass off McMann’s skate and into the crowd. The Leafs took their timeout afterward, and off the ensuing faceoff, McMann lost a Marner pass in his feet, Domi blew a skate blade in his own zone collecting the puck, Nylander overskated/bobbled a puck at his defensive blue line, and Rielly fired a pass off of Matthews’ skate from a few feet away in the neutral zone.

The Leafs finally gained the zone but with no time to properly set up and work the puck around, so all they could muster was a Marner shot from a distance that Forsberg froze to end the game.


10.   The Leafs’ forward depth was/is facing a serious test at the moment, but the optimistic take is that the injury to Knies doesn’t appear overly long-term (said with the caveat that day-to-day can mean week-to-week with this team lately), and the schedule is getting really light in the next week; they play just Wednesday-Saturday. They need quality NHL bodies back up front. That much was abundantly clear tonight.


Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts


Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts


Game Highlights w/ Joe Bowen & Jim Ralph