With a 2-1 loss in Vancouver, the Maple Leafs were forced to settle for six of eight points on the West Coast trip heading into the break.
Despite tonight’s unfavourable results, the Leafs are three points back of Florida for the division lead with two games in hand, the best shape they’ve found themselves in inside a division title race at the winter pause in a long, long time.
Your game in 10:
1. The first few shifts of this game were decent enough for the Leafs. Craig Berube started his fourth line, which Rick Tocchet countered with the Elias Pettersson line. The fourth line got in on the forecheck, leading to a nice Max Pacioretty hit on Pettersson, followed by a Canuck icing. The Leafs‘ top line’s first shift was an offensive-zone faceoff as a result.
A few minutes later, the Leafs’ third line generated the game’s first good chance. Pontus Holmberg drove a defender wide, and Nick Robertson checked back to recover a loose puck inside the offensive blue line, leading to a good look for Bobby McMann. McMann shot for a rebound with Holmberg arriving at the back post, but it didn’t quite connect.
Four of the game’s first five shots went to the Leafs, but the period started getting away from them afterward. The Leafs didn’t get pucks deep a few times in the period when they should’ve done so; one was a Robertson turnover at the offensive blue line 5.5 minutes into the game that led to a rush the other way and a good backdoor chance for Filip Chytil (Joseph Woll came up big). The Canucks started to build momentum from there. Overall, the shot attempts were 24-12 Vancouver at five-on-five after 20 minutes.
2. The 1-0 Canucks goal, scored seven minutes into the game, started with a long own-zone sequence for the fourth line, as a bit of an awkward Kampf-Woll handoff below the Toronto goal line led to a Canucks puck recovery and subsequent spell of offensive-zone pressure. The Leafs were able to clear it to the offensive blue line, but as they were scrambling to change, Steven Lorentz couldn’t get off the ice as the Canucks quick-upped the puck back onto the attack. Lorentz was tired as the Canucks stuffed a breakout attempt on his side of the zone, and then Pettersson came up high with the puck.
Pettersson had time to spot Hronek activating and patiently sent a diagonal seam pass to the backdoor. Matthew Knies was caught puck-watching and didn’t shoulder-check for his defenseman, who happened to be a pretty talented offensive blue liner. Filip Hronek’s one-touch finish was excellent, giving Woll no chance.
3. The Leafs played a decent second period overall, tilting the ice more in their favour — a 25-13 edge in shot attempts — but they were still down 1-0 and not creating much of note, with just one high-danger chance for each team in the 18 minutes of five-on-five time in the middle frame. The Nylander-Tavares-Marner line had a rough go of it in the first period, and you were basically counting down the minutes waiting for Berube to switch the lines back to the regular configuration — Marner back with Matthews and Knies, and McMann/Pacioretty with Tavares and Nylander.
As we’ve seen in the past, there is validity to the concept of Domi on Matthews’ wing with Marner on a separate line from Matthews — particularly against teams without a really tough matchup proposition to worry about — but the Nylander-Tavares-Marner experiment was always a tough one to envision working out. No one is against trying things out over a long season, but it’s just hard to see it as a five-on-five line in normal situations; there is only so much puck to go around for two puck-dominant wingers in Nylander and Marner, and more than that, the Leafs also end up with an awkward-looking overall lineup in which someone is on their off wing on every single unit from lines from 1-4 (Domi on RW, Nylander on LW, Robertson on RW, and Lorentz on RW). It’s not as conducive to seamlessly breaking out, moving pucks around, and completing plays (and it also leaves McMann centered by Holmberg).
The second line looked much less than the sum of its parts and was outshot 5-2/out-attempted 10-5 at five-on-five, so Berube moved away from it to start the third.
4. The Nylander-Tavares-Marner line, in its final shift of the game, was pinned down in its own end late in the second period, leading to a dangerous goal-mouth scramble. When the third line hopped the boards, Holmberg was on the receiving end of a high stick in the corner of the Leafs’ defensive zone for yet another drawn penalty by #29, and the Leafs suddenly had a really important power play with a chance to tie it going into the third.
A decent look for Tavares in the left circle was all the top unit had to show for its first shift, and the second unit almost set up McMann at the backdoor, but he wasn’t ready for the pass. When Domi’s weak shot through no traffic was frozen for a faceoff, there were just 12 seconds left in the PP, and Berube sent out Matthews with Knies and Marner, along with Rielly-OEL.
The power play roared to life from there, zipping the puck around with good off-the-puck movement to open up one-time looks for Matthews and Knies. When OEL recovered the rebound from Matthews’ shot, he made a nice play to drop it back to Rielly in the right circle, where Rielly patiently got his head up, looked for Knies initially at the back post, then wristed one low into the far side of the net through traffic.
"THE VETERAN HAS TIED THIS GAME AT ONE!"
Rielly 6th of the Season vs Canucks courtesy of @Bonsie1951 and @Jim_Ralph pic.twitter.com/7it5PiUVh0
— Maple Leafs Hotstove (@LeafsNews) February 9, 2025
It wasn’t technically a power-play goal, but the Canucks penalty taker, Drew O’Connor, was just arriving back in the zone when the puck hit the mesh with five seconds left in the period.
5. For all the flak he takes for his shot, which isn’t a threat from a distance, Morgan Rielly is a good finisher when he is down below the tops of the circles, as we’ve seen many, many times over the years; just check out his 20-goal season from 2018-19 (you’ll get the idea after just the first five goals if you don’t have the time). He hasn’t had as many looks from down there this season, as he’s tried to find the right balance between offense and defense and, along the way, seemingly lost his confidence to move his feet and stay aggressive on the attacking side of the game, resulting in a worst-of-all-worlds situation for an extended period.
With the goal, Rielly enters the break on a four-game points streak, his first since late October, and he also had a primary assist overturned versus Calgary for a high stick by Tavares. He can now enter the break feeling a lot better about his game rather than stewing on the continued lack of production. Any hope of the Leafs going anywhere this spring depends, in part, on Rielly turning the page on his 51-game stretch in which he went -18 (keeping in mind it was just 33 for/37 against at five-on-five) with just 22 points produced. Rielly possibly turning a corner, or seemingly starting to, was the most significant individual development of the road trip.
6. Amid a cagey start to the third period with the game at 1-1, a huge swing took place seven minutes into the final frame, as the game opened up briefly. When Pacioretty failed to get a puck in deep for a turnover and a 3v2 rush against, Simon Benoit defended Chytil really well, stuffing him twice as he tried to cut into the slot and shoot. Benoit then identified Nylander was releasing for a possible breakaway and sent him away with a nice bank pass.
Uncharacteristically, Nylander mishandled it and left the puck behind, failing to even get a shot off.
On the shift after the subsequent TV timeout, OEL took a high-sticking penalty that led to the deciding goal.
7. The game-losing goal came on a penalty-kill breakdown for a unit that has had a few too many in the last month, as they’ve killed at just 67.7% over the last dozen games. It was a well-worked goal by Vancouver, but it was a little too easy from the Leafs’ perspective.
The first minute of the penalty kill was smooth sailing. When Knies and Kampf hit the ice with Benoit and Myers, Knies was pressuring the puck carrier in the defensive-zone corner as the puck went up high, at which point Kampf went to apply pressure. Knies became the tip of the wedge/triangle and needed to return to the middle and hold the middle ice. But after the Canucks went across the top, Knies took a bit of a casual, loopy route toward the puck carrier without accomplishing much of anything, as a lateral pass went right through him to Brock Boeser and took him out of the play, opening up the middle.
Myers was left in no man’s land, staring down Boeser inside a lot of time and space in the middle of the slot. Myers tried to block it but ended up only screening Woll, who did not see the shot based on how he played it and his body language after the puck went in.
8. The Leafs generated just three shots on goal at five-on-five in the third period (when the game was either tied at 1-1 or they were down one), with an expected goal value of 0.2. The Canucks were committed and competitive defensively, and the Leafs struggled to penetrate the middle of the ice and generated too few second and third opportunities in this game.
That made the power play opportunity with just over three minutes to play the team’s golden opportunity to earn at least a point, and there was an interesting decision to be made here. Rielly has been heating up offensively of late and scored a huge goal to tie it up earlier in the evening. He also had another good opportunity to score just before the late PP on the delayed-penalty 6-on-5 but saw his shot deflected into the netting. Would he touch the ice at 5-on-4/6-on-4, or were the Leafs going all forwards, first with the usual group of five and then with McMann once the goalie was pulled?
In the end, Rielly didn’t touch the ice for the final 3:02. I think I would’ve had him out there at some point; he had a really good road trip, just scored a big goal, and it sends the right reward/message, as much as anything else, as to his importance to the team offensively.
9. That’s not to say the Leafs didn’t have chances to tie it or that firing pucks with all of Knies, McMann, and Tavares in the net-front/slot area is a bad concept.
The Leafs’ best chance came with two minutes left, one minute into the power play. Matthews and Nylander went cross-seam and back, as Nylander ripped a hard return pass that Matthews briefly caught, settled, and then released vs. one-timing due to the sheer pace of the pass from Nylander. Matthews got a solid shot off without totally roofing it, but the extra beat allowed Lankinen to get across for a game-saving stop.
For Matthews, that means he enters the break on a six-game goal-less run; he’s had several five-game droughts over the years, but he hasn’t experienced a six-gamer since the Mike Babcock era in 2018-19, by my very quick check. This is all said while keeping in mind that he has seven points in his last four games.
The other best chance came after a nice Marner keep-in at the line, followed by a Nylander pass into Tavares in the slot, where Lankinen shut him down. The Leafs couldn’t find their own answer on special teams in the period, and it proved to be the difference in a tight game with little between the teams at five-on-five.
10. A few points to chew on as a long break in NHL action is upon us, and trade season will be kicking into full gear coming out of the pause (with trade speculation a big part of passing the time when the short Four Nations tournament isn’t on the TV):
Nick Robertson‘s ice time in the last five games: 10:55, 10:26, 9:50, 9:34, and 10:14. It’s very much trending the wrong way, and he has one point in his last 12 games (minus-six).
Fraser Minten and Nikita Grebenkin sat out of both games this weekend for the Marlies — important division rivalry games against first-place Laval on home ice. Those are the exact types of games young developing players should be experiencing down on the farm. Neither is injured, and while Marlies head coach John Gruden suggested they’ll be integrated back into the lineup at some point, it’s still very odd. Minten has seen all of 11 minutes of game action at either level in the last 14 days, which really shouldn’t happen (unless….).
Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts
