In this 7-4 loss to Colorado, the Maple Leafs opportunistically built a 4-2 lead through 35 minutes that wasn’t totally deserved on the balance of play. They then coughed up a 4-3 third-period lead despite an improved final frame, ultimately falling to their third consecutive defeat.

Your game in 10:

1.   The game started with a thud for the Leafs. After a short Matthews line vs. MacKinnon line 50/50 shift to start the game, the Leafs immediately conceded the 1-0 goal on the first shift of Brandon Carlo‘s Leafs career, as the Tavares line joined the Rielly-Carlo pair against the Nelson, Drouin, and Nichushkin line.

The initial danger started when Cale Makar sent a stretch pass to the far blue line to Drouin, who Rielly gapped-up on and forced back initially before sagging way off as Drouin ripped a pass through the middle to a streaking Nelson. In some open ice, Nelson toe-dragged around Carlo’s stick for a shot off the bar, but the Leafs were okay afterward when Tavares broke up a play high in the zone. However, William Nylander was casual with the puck when bumping it over to Pontus Holmberg, leading to a turnover. The puck should’ve been out of the zone at this point.

From there, the Avalanche fired a few shots at the net from the points, the second of which was tipped into the net by Nichushkin, who was free in the slot cutting across the middle as all of Carlo, Rielly, and Holmberg were watching on.

On the second shift of his Leafs career, Carlo got turnstiled by MacKinnon for a 2v1 chance. This game was flying from the start, and Carlo was a deer-in-headlights as he got his bearings, but it is a credit to him that he settled in after a tumultuous start. Carlo ended up leading the defense in time on ice (22:04, even +/-, six shot blocks, 3:31 shorthanded).

2.   The Leafs manufactured a quick response two minutes later courtesy of the top line. This goal was all about Matthew Knies, who started the sequence with a nice read on the back-check to cut out a dangerous pass across from MacKinnon as Necas wound up for a one-timer.

From there, the Leafs broke up ice, as Matthews and Marner made two quick touch plays in the neutral zone; Marner’s found a streaking Knies, who gained a step on Devon Toews, pivoted around as Makar scrambled across to close him down, and found Marner as the trailer. Marner’s finish was a quality one into the far side of the net.

The great intrigue of Knies’ potential — which is now coming to fruition before our eyes — is that he has the size, power, and finishing ability to complement the stars on the team effectively and also the skill and speed to make these kinds of plays with and against the top players in the league. Since his five-point game against Boston in early January, Knies has 23 points in 22 games (13 goals). At 22, with several years of RFA control still ahead, it’s no wonder his name was a non-starter for Treliving in trade talks over the past few weeks.

3.   Still within the opening six minutes, the Leafs conceded a 2-1 goal after a sloppy pass from Max Domi led to an icing call.

Scott Laughton lost the d-zone draw to Brock Nelson but stuck with him and blocked a shot-for-a-tip attempt toward Nelson from the point. When the puck went to the wall, Laughton pursued Nichushkin, who cycled it low to Nelson, who Rielly picked up and tracked up the wall. Laughton made a split-section decision not to fall back to the middle — where Nichushkin had shifted to — and jumped into double-coverage to try to kill the play on the wall with Rielly, but Nelson slipped the puck right through Laughton’s skates; Laughton tried to recover, but Nichushkin was now open in the slot with a passing option to his right and only Carlo defending in space. Nichushkin took a stride in and lifted it over Anthony Stolarz‘s shoulder on the near post.

For the goalie’s part, this goal wasn’t on him, but it was a stoppable shot for Stolarz; it wasn’t labeled into the top corner or anything.

4.   The Leafs kept fighting back in this period. When Laughton raced down the left wing 12 minutes into the period, he put a shot on goal for a whistle and followed it up by stopping at the top of the crease and buzzing the goalie a bit, which drew a reaction out of Sam Molinski and led to a small scrum.

It’s a very small example in this case, but it’s nice to have another player in the mix who will look to spark the team with some edge and gamesmanship, as Laughton will sometimes do. Domi was in the mix on this scrum as well, and the two should be able to feed off of each other in this regard if they play together regularly.

The Leafs lost the subsequent offensive-zone faceoff, but Holmberg and Nylander hounded the puck off the draw, and Drouin overskated it, forcing a turnover in the slot that Tavares hopped on. Tavares absolutely leaned into one, ripping it home into the top shelf over Mackenzie Blackwood’s blocker. Give Tavares some space in the slot, and the result is often predictable, as we would see again later on the power play.

5.   The Leafs then took the lead with four minutes remaining on a goal all about Bobby McMann in the buildup. He had just about finished a solid shift where he got in on the forecheck and forced a turnover; he was now over 50 seconds into his shift when two-thirds of the top line came over the boards, and Marner flipped a puck for him to chase. McMann dug in and took advantage of a soft play on the puck by Cale Makar before holding off the attention of Necas and setting up a Marner one-timer from just inside the right faceoff dot to make it 3-2.

It’s getting repetitive, but we’ll keep writing it until we’re blue in the face, as long as Berube manages his ice time this way. McMann played 10:44 in this game — basically fourth-line minutes. The forecheck is such a critical part of the Berube identity, and McMann is one of the best forecheckers on the team with his size and speed. They were facing one of the best skating teams in the league, and McMann is one of the fastest players on the Leafs. The Avalanche D core is mobile and skilled but not particularly large (Molinski, Girard, Lindgren, and Makar are all 6’0 or less), and McMann’s size and speed — with the ability to get home on time on the forecheck — is a real asset in all games but particularly this type of one. It is nowhere near enough ice time.

6.   The second period with the long change was largely a mess from the Leafs’ perspective, but Anthony Stolarz settled in well, and they remained opportunistic enough to come out of it still up one goal (thanks to a PP tally).

At five-on-five, Colorado outshot the Leafs 10-1, and shot attempts were 20-5. Inside the top matchup, MacKinnon owned nine of 11 five-on-five shot attempts against Matthews through 40 minutes. There wasn’t an overwhelming number of high-danger looks against in there, and the Avs emphasized a lot of low-to-high shot volume; they put 14 shots on net from the defense on 22 shot attempts in the first two periods. But the ice was often tilted the wrong way from the Leafs’ perspective.

The issues in the second period started with the back-to-back penalties in the first five minutes, both stemming from the Benoit-Myers pairing not moving the puck cleanly out of the zone. One was taken by Myers himself (a trip), and Nylander took the other (a hook) after Myers turned a puck over trying to clear the zone (he found the stick of Brock Nelson). The Leafs survived the kills, but it hurt the team’s flow.

Against a high-pressure, fast-skating Avs team, the decision by the coaching staff to form a Benoit-Myers pairing was a real head-scratcher (and it contributed to costing the team further in the third). When Tanev is healthy, only one of the two will be in the lineup, but the predictable inability for this pair to exit the zone cleanly against one of the league’s top offenses really hurt the Leafs at various points in the game. Combine it with a struggling Rielly and an acclimating Carlo, and the Leafs’ D didn’t break pucks out cleanly enough for most of the first 40 minutes. The Avalanche more than doubled them up in offensive-zone time.

7.   The Leafs briefly led 4-2 after scoring on the power-play; it came largely against the run of play after a choppy sequence of the Leafs struggling to break out cleanly ended in an offensive-zone hooking penalty by Jack Drury on Steven Lorentz.

The execution by the top unit was sharp after losing the initial draw for a clearance. Auston Matthews took the drop pass in his own zone and broke into the zone with speed before attempting a backhand shot from which Nylander recovered the rebound. From there, Nylander drew in a second PKer up high and then shifted it down low, where Matthews and Tavares did the rest. Matthews, waiting for the bumper play to Tavares to open up, cleverly drew in Devon Toews before hitting Tavares for a quick one-time redirect into the far top corner.

Tavares is now up to five goals and 10 points in eight games since the break — which appears to have served him well — and remains around a point-per-game overall this season. After relinquishing the captaincy last summer, all he has done since is produce a bounce-back season while openly declaring his desire to extend his contract in Toronto once Leafs management gets around to it on their list of priorities. As the latest chapter in the Marner contract saga sucks up a lot of the oxygen in the market and emanates really negative vibes overall, Tavares’ stellar play and selfless commitment to the team deserves time in the spotlight.

8.   The Leafs gave the goal back just two and a half minutes later. It stemmed from the attrition of the Leafs struggling to break out of their zone with control and spending too much time defending in the period. It led to a bad change with the long change; with the puck only out as far as the offensive blue line, the far-side winger — Knies — risked it by peeling for the change instead of holding the ice with the far-side defender (McCabe).

That led to Nylander hustling across the zone off the bench as McCabe had two Avs rushers coming at him. Colorado worked it cross ice and back as a tired McCabe (1:20 shift) got beat back to the net by the eventual goal-scorer (Joel Kiviranta) while OEL (who was caught a little in between on the play) and a back-tracking Robertson couldn’t cut off the pass.

Overall, the Leafs were fortunate to remain one goal ahead after the second period. Still, poor details led to a rush goal for one of the league’s most dangerous offenses. In the previous game, the Leafs conceded a few too many rush opportunities against another elite rush team in Vegas.

9.   The irony of the Leafs coughing up their first third-period lead for a regulation loss this season was that they were playing their best period of the game before conceding the tying goal.

The first few minutes of the period were rough, but the Leafs started exiting the zone cleaner and establishing more of a forecheck and cycle game with the lead. They gave up very little defensively in the first 10 minutes. The Matthews line won a few shifts vs. the MacKinnon line — and nearly scored on a dangerous redirect by Knies in the slot. Shortly afterward, Holmberg made a really nice play in the offensive zone to chip a Tavares pass by a defender and create a chance in tight to the goalie. Nylander then had a good look on an extended offensive-zone shift wherein the Leafs managed to bring fresh legs off the bench to continue the pressure.

The tying goal came against the run of play of the previous few minutes. When Myers couldn’t come up with the puck in a race/battle on the wall following a Colorado dump-in, Laughton attempted to support the D down low but didn’t prevent the pass coming out front from behind the net via Charlie Coyle. Simon Benoit read it poorly in front; he anticipated that Coyle might take the puck around the back of the net and jumped over to the far post, which left the front of the net open (and led Stolarz to read off of it/shift post to post). Nick Robertson was also seemingly anticipating a potential rim around the back of the net by Coyle to the far point, so he turned away from the front of the net. In the end, a chasm opened in the heart of the slot for Drouin to bury the tying goal past a confused Stolarz.

Defensively, it’s too easy of a goal to concede from the Leafs’ perspective.

10a.   It went from bad to worse a few minutes later when Mitch Marner — who otherwise was the Leafs’ best player in the game — got caught being far too cute with the puck at the offensive blue line in a tied game late in the third. He was forced to haul down Martin Necas to prevent a potential breakaway against, sending the Avalance to the power play.

The Leafs nearly survived it — despite some nervy moments — until MacKinnon delivered the dagger with just 15 seconds left in the kill. The Leafs weren’t planning to mix Laughton into the PK without a practice first, but he took his first PK shift as a Leaf late in the kill with Marner in the box. He initially got a stick on the seam pass to MacKinnon, but not enough to clear it. From there, he went to cut off the pass to the top, and when MacKinnon looked it off and took a few strides down toward the net, the Leafs’ right side D — OEL — stayed glued to the bumper player; recognizing the relative threat of handing Nathan MacKinnon an open lane to the net, he’d have been better off stepping up/shifting over to close down. MacKinnon beat Stolarz far-side high for the game-winner.

It’s a more awkward play for a lefty on the right (OEL), and when Tanev is back, the Leafs can run Carlo and Tanev on the right side of their PK, which should hopefully help the cause as they look to clean up an ailing shorthanded unit down the stretch.

Shortly after the goalie was pulled with around two minutes remaining, Rielly rounded out a tough game by turning a puck over directly to the Avalanche for a hat-trick-completing empty-net goal for Nichushkin (MacKinnon added one more EN for a 7-4 final).

10b.  All in all, the Leafs need a few more saves right now — this is by far their worst four-game segment of goaltending this season — and to clean up their details defensively while giving their new additions time to acclimate. This wasn’t a pretty two-game set against two of the league’s elite teams in Vegas and Colorado, but there are extenuating circumstances with the Tanev injury, the deadline upheaval, and the tough travel.

From a lineup perspective, it’s nice to get a headstart on familiarizing Rielly and Carlo, but the Leafs would’ve been better off avoiding the predictable Benoit-Myers fiasco by running Benoit-McCabe / Rielly-Myers / OEL-Carlo, with the plan to introduce Rielly and Carlo as a partnership once Tanev is back in the fold. OEL-Carlo is definitely worth exploring at some point, regardless.

Up front, maybe there is some logic to not overdoing it with Jarnkrok right away, but the Leafs were coming off two days’ rest, and Robertson never made much sense on 4RW. Holmberg has been giving the Leafs decent minutes of late, but McMann cannot routinely play three or four minutes less than him (it is coaching malpractice).

As for the newcomers, we covered Carlo starting slowly but settling in (and leading the team in TOI). Laughton played just under 12 minutes and was on the ice for two five-on-five goals against and a PK goal against. There was plenty of shared blame on those goals, but that’s never how one wants to debut with a new squad. He put a handful of passes into skates as well. Still, there were also a few flashes of what he can bring — knocking down a puck mid-air for a good defensive play, a good pass to Domi off the rush in the third, buzzing the goalie a little bit in the first; the added speed, jam, and his generally responsible, straight-line game down the middle should help the Leafs’ cause. Post-game, his immediate show of accountability and pledge to be better on Monday was refreshing to hear.

Of course, it’s far, far too early to judge the fit with either player. Notably, neither Laughton nor Carlo have ever changed teams in the league before and weren’t even traded at any point in junior.

Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Game Highlights w/ Joe Bowen & Jim Ralph

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