With everyone inside and outside the organization labeling this either a “must-win” or a “huge” game for the Maple Leafs, they gave up six goals plus an empty-netter and an overturned goal, and mustered just 13 shots on goal through 40 minutes. That really says it all.
At a time when they needed to knuckle down defensively while facing a gauntlet of strong opponents without William Nylander, the Leafs’ play without the puck took an absolute nose dive during this 0-4-1 homestand. They’ve given up goals within a few minutes of taking the lead (twice in the first period tonight). They’ve given up back-breaking goals at the end of periods. They’ve given up awful tone-setting goals at the beginning of periods. These are the hallmarks of a bad hockey team.
If they’re not turning pucks over in bad spots to feed odd-man rushes and transition opportunities for the other team, they’re defending like they did on the 1-1 Buffalo goal with numbers back:
It’s hard to know where to begin here. I don’t know how the Leafs managed to turn this into a quick and easy backdoor tap-in for the Sabres. Matthew Knies loses Rasmus Dahlin. Brandon Carlo doesn’t make the right read to shift over, and he doesn’t take away the pass, either. Morgan Rielly bizarrely attempts to jump over Carlo to close on Dahlin, taking himself out of it. It’s a Keystone Cops routine befitting a preseason or early October hockey game, not the 53rd game of the regular season in what was considered a must-win divisional matchup.
This team is completely lost right now, from the goalie out, and if there was a loss that was the final straw for officially shifting gears to next season and beyond, this was most certainly it. It would now take a pre-Olympics road-trip sweep to even pause and half-consider another path forward this season. Even if they won all those games and started thinking differently, they should remember this homestand and sober up quickly.
I must say, as much as I’ve written until I’m blue in the fingers that Craig Berube is not the right coach for this team (this is such a damning chart), I really didn’t see this team shifting into sell mode before the end of January, certainly not after their 2-1-1 road trip, which came on the heels of a 7-0-2 stretch. It’s going to take some time to wrap my head around the various paths forward now, although the clear-headed Anthony Petrielli got off to a really good start with his piece this week.
One post-game thought:
The single biggest reason these two franchises, the Sabres and Leafs, have flipped trajectories this season is that the Buffalo blue line drives so much of their play and offensive activity, with Dahlin, Samuelsson, Power, and Byram in their top four. The Leafs have OEL (who turns 35 in 2026) going right now, and that’s about it. Recently, both Jake McCabe and Morgan Rielly aren’t producing much of anything offensively but are each providing a free goal for the other team apiece in many of the recent losses. McCabe should rebound and make his contract continue to look team-friendly, but Rielly’s Toronto tenure is clearly nearing the end of its course, and that’s a quagmire for (maybe a different) GM to sort out. Troy Stecher does his best and should be considered for a cheap contract. Simon Benoit should not be a lineup lock or guaranteed fixture beyond the season, and the insistence on using him as a regular has thrown the pairings out of whack (coaching staff’s fault, not Benoit’s).
Right now, the Leafs don’t have the pieces in the system coming to fix this. Up front, John Tavares is really fighting it during this gruelling stretch of schedule (-10 in his last 10 games), and we have to be honest about where he fits into a playoff-calibre lineup moving forward (further down the lineup, possibly on the wing). In addition to the defense piece, the Leafs need to start thinking hard about long-term 2C solutions going forward. Short of manufacturing a couple of hard-to-pull-together hockey trades (similar to what the Capitals did with Jakob Chychrun and PLD), the Leafs have got to start importing young Cs and Ds into the organization, via young roster players with intriguing upside potential and promising near-ready prospect additions (if they want to try to win a Cup still in the Matthews window), while also adding more draft capital they can use to either select lottery tickets or flip them for other assets down the line.
Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Game Highlights w/ Joe Bowen: Sabres 7 vs. Maple Leafs 4
