This road trip started with a promising win against the Edmonton Oilers. Now, the Maple Leafs will need a win in Vancouver, usually a house of horrors for Toronto, just to finish .500.
After the Calgary game, Jim Hiller was about as curt as he’s been in his short time as head coach, clearly frustrated with the performance. He called out the neutral zone play a number of times between these two games, and I thought they might come out flying as a result. Silly me.
On the second shift of the game, as Darren Raddysh casually went to play the puck, Bobby McMann stole his lunch and walked in for a clean look. On the next shift, William Nylander lazily poked a puck up the wall, was easily stuffed, then didn’t track the man who stuffed him as he went down the middle of the Leafs’ zone and scored the 1-0 goal.
Sure, it was an unfortunate bounce — the puck hit the post, Sergei Bobrovsky’s back, and then went in the net — but two minutes in, the Kraken got two clean Grade-A looks from lazy play off the sticks of what’s supposed to be two of the Leafs’ best players. It’s disappointing, to say the least.
On the positive side, the Leafs did pick it up as the period went along. After the Kraken scored, the Leafs outshot them 14-4 the rest of the period. The thing is, they didn’t create a ton, and the best 5v5 chances still went to the Kraken. Seattle was up 4-1 in high-danger chances at 5v5, as they stuffed the fourth line for a turnover at the blue line and got it back to the net with space for yet another Grade A.
Toward the end of the period, the Leafs did make a push and drew a penalty in the process, and if there’s one constant positive with this team, it’s the power play. With the penalty nearly coinciding with the end of the period, the top power play unit stayed out and scored with 22 seconds left in the man advantage. After a dicey Nylander pass made it across the blue line, Matthews touched it to Raddysh, who gave it right back to Matthews, who was heading downhill looking to attack. As he did, McKenna popped high, Matthews found him, and McKenna scored on a similar shot to his first career goal: far side off the bar and in.
After an up-and-down first period featuring some egregious turnovers, the Leafs slowly picked it up as the period went on and finished at 1-1. It felt like the table was set for the game to settle down and for their top talent to push through. But in the second period, the Leafs weren’t even close, and the tone was set right away.
I really liked Jim Hiller’s decision to start the fourth line in the first period. They have been effective, the team didn’t play well last game and has some injuries, and he is looking for a spark or tone-setter. But they did nothing on the opening shift and didn’t have a good first period, giving up a Grade A and providing no real spark. It was a surprise that they started the second period with that in mind.
16 seconds later, the Kraken regained the lead. On a harmless rim around the wall in the Kraken zone, Morgan Rielly stepped up, thinking he had support from the forwards, as he should have. Almost every team in the league is telling their defensemen to be aggressive on the wall on a rim with forward coverage. Rielly stepped up, didn’t get the puck, and then Blueger and MacEwen inexplicably skated at the same forward. Once it was chipped by them, the Kraken raced down on a 2v1 and scored. Technically, Troy Stecher dove to try to take away the pass, but with Ben Meyers and Josh Mahura on the ice, he should have just skated over to Mahura and challenged Meyers to straight-up beat the goalie. Instead, he dove, Meyers completed a nice pass, and Mahura scored into a wide-open net.
In back-to-back periods, the Leafs started carelessly and paid the price.
As in the first, the Leafs got a power play chance to get it back, and Matthews again set up McKenna for a goal. In a nice sequence, Roslovic held it on the wall, sucked in the Kraken, and found Matthews in the high slot, who then passed it far side to McKenna for a one-timer he made no mistake on. That was the Leafs’ only highlight of the period, with just one other shot on net after that goal.
On the very next shift, Vinni Lettieri took a neutral-zone penalty through carelessness with his stick right after the Leafs tied it. It was the first of four Leafs penalties in the period, and for once, the penalty kill couldn’t bail them out.
It was a bit of a fortuitous bounce: The Kraken had the puck on the half-wall, the backside player drove the net for a redirection, and Stecher read it well, lifting his stick. Unfortunately, it went off Stecher’s skate and in.
That marked three goals on nine shots for the Kraken, but truthfully, you can’t really fault Bobrovsky for any of them: a royal road pathway two minutes into the game, a full-ice 2v1 that looked like a practice drill, and an own-goal deflection off a skate on a puck that was going wide.
The fourth goal, though, was entirely on Bobrovsky. It was a wrist shot from a defenseman, cross-body to the far side. He simply can’t get beat by that shot.
In the third period, the Leafs didn’t have much going on at 5v5, but it opened up around seven minutes in when it went to 4v4. Stecher and OEL worked a nice give-and-go before Stecher found Cowan in the high slot for a shot, and Roslovic potted the rebound.
When the game returned to 5v5 hockey, the Leafs still struggled to create much. The Kraken generally snuffed them out, except when Matthews was on. Unsurprisingly, it was Matthews who tied it up at 6v5.
Raddysh got the puck on the point and skated in as if he was looking to shoot, then passed it to Matthews near the goal line. The captain one-timed it at the goalie’s feet, and it found its way in. The shot doesn’t look pretty, but it’s effective; any goalie will tell you pucks fired at their feet are trouble.
However, the Leafs couldn’t make it to overtime. After Colton Sissons lost a defensive-zone faceoff, the puck went to the point and over to Brandon Montour, who walked in with a clean look on Bobrovsky and blasted a slap shot through him. Again, a goal that can’t happen.
After five goals on 17 shots for the Kraken, that was the game.
Post-Game Notes
- About a month into the season now, the Leafs have seven wins. Of those wins, only two have come with the Leafs scoring under five goals. There is no question this is a talented club, but the defense is porous, and they can’t sustainably win games in the league like this. Again, a lot of attention will go to Bobrovsky — and yes, they should have gotten at least a point out of this one — but the first two goals were awful breakdowns, and the third was a deflection on a power play. It’s the second game in a row in which the Leafs took five penalties, and most of them have been awful. I have no problem criticizing the refs, but the Leafs are taking needless penalties all over the ice and coupling them with egregious breakdowns that require the team to score five or more to win. That won’t cut it.
- It’s a shame Auston Matthews’ performance won’t get more attention due to the loss. He was excellent on the night with two primary assists and a late tying goal. His 20:08 felt too low given how well he was playing. McKenna also picked up three points and is a clear power-play weapon already. He’s crafty at finding and creating space, and his hands are elite. It’s nice to see his shot is really coming along. He made no mistake on either of his finishes, and while I’m not going to suggest he can really rip it, he can clearly find holes and fire it home already.
- Nick Paul has filled in admirably at center, and when Marchenko and Nylander flank him, it’s okay because they are both so dynamic offensively that they make up for it. But Paul has just one point in his last eight games, and it was an empty-netter against the Sharks. John Tavares’ absence has been felt, too, amid their key injuries. He was at a point-per-game rate before the injury.
- On a related note, this was easily William Nylander’s worst game of the season. He gifted the Kraken an early goal, went pointless on the night, made a number of lazy backchecks and weak plays on the wall… and he led all Leafs forwards with over 22 minutes of ice time (and was second in 5v5 ice time). In the first period, McKenna sat for over five minutes as Hiller strangely sent out Sissons for an offensive-zone faceoff. Sissons got rinsed on the faceoff, the Kraken iced it, Sissons got rinsed on the draw again, the Kraken iced it again, Matthews took the next one and won it, and when the Kraken went down the ice, they almost scored in part because Sissons didn’t track his check properly. Easton Cowan was benched the previous game, and McKenna has randomly sat out shifts a number of times, but Nylander is getting a free pass right now, and it’s becoming unbearable.
- Nylander’s 19 points in 15 games to start the season are impressive, but they’re masking his 5v5 play. He has been outscored 11-14 so far, and his shot attempt shares and expected goals are both around replacement-level quality. Obviously, he’s a one-shot star who can go make something happen at a moment’s notice. You need gamebreakers, and he is a very good one. But at the end of the day, he’s straight-up losing his minutes, and the juice has not been worth the squeeze. They need their stars to lead the way and set an example. Instead, they needed to break up the Cowan-Matthews-Roslovic top line that was humming because, realistically, they knew there was no planet where they could pair up McKenna and Nylander again, given how poor they both are defensively. The difference is that Nylander is 30, not 18. He’s supposed to be one of their best players.
- It will also get lost, but down two and on the penalty kill, Troy Stecher’s hustle drew a penalty to make it 4v4. On said 4v4, he helped set up the goal to pull within one. That’s a four-game point streak for Stecher, who played just under 22 minutes. Darren Raddysh also recorded his first multi-point game as a Leaf and logged nearly 25 minutes.
- Bo Groulx played 6:23, Zack MacEwen came in at 8:21, and Vinni Lettieri finished at 9:15. Both MacEwen and Lettieri took penalties, and the fourth line had a brutal shift to open the second, giving up a wide-open 2v1 and a goal. Colton Sissons went 6/16 in the faceoff circle, including the loss that led to the game-winner. All told, that’s two 5v5 goals against and two penalties for the bottom six, who also contributed nothing offensively. They can’t keep rolling with all of these players. It’s weird that Dakota Joshua’s equipment couldn’t make the trip; otherwise, he seemingly would have played. He’s probably not much of a solution, especially when starting the season late, but at least he’s an actual NHL player. Even still, they may as well try other Marlies at this rate.
- It never made sense to start Sergei Bobrovsky in this game, especially after his performance in Calgary. It also doesn’t make sense that they seemingly can’t pull him and put in Anthony Stolarz cold. That seems like a conscious decision by the organization, but they can’t play every game with the starter staying in the net no matter what, and it cost the team at least a point tonight. Bobrovsky will probably take a disproportionate amount of blame for this loss, but make no mistake: he was definitely part of the problem. Allowing five goals on just 17 shots will almost never cut it. Stolarz should obviously start the next game, but he should have started this one, so who really knows at this point?
Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts
