Writing these words feels like beating a broken drum at this point, but for the Maple Leafs to have any hope of making the playoffs this season, they needed to rebound against all their Atlantic Division rivals.
It was the one division they had a losing record against last season, and with the expanded 84-game season, the league just added more division games to the schedule. So far this season, the Leafs are 0-3-1 against the Atlantic, and all of those games have been at home. Unless something drastically changes, they have no chance of making the playoffs in any capacity with results like those.
You could actually argue the run of play in this game was fairly even in this game, because it was. But bad turnovers, the weaker goaltender, and an inability to finish sank the Leafs. This team is not winning games scoring just two goals.
Let’s discuss what happened.
The first period was a strange one to break down. Ultimately, the Leafs were down 2-0 after one, which was both incredibly frustrating and largely appropriate. However, they also ended the period out-attempting Montreal at 5v5, up 7-6 in scoring chances and tied 4-4 in high-danger chances.
William Nylander broke in on a 2v1 and rang it off the post. Auston Matthews was robbed on a clean deflection in front of the net off an Easton Cowan pass. Gavin McKenna’s wraparound attempt was dangerous, but it seemed to roll off his stick. Jack Roslovic broke in all alone at the buzzer. The Leafs certainly had good opportunities to score and didn’t spend the entire period in their end by any means.
When the Leafs were in their end, though, it was a mess. They gifted the Habs multiple goals with terrible plays.
The first goal came off a Gavin McKenna turnover. The puck was bumped to him in the middle of the ice, where he tried a half-hearted 180-degree pass to Brandon Duhaime that was easily picked off. After Alex Newhook picked it up in the slot and tried to step around Sergei Bobrovsky before throwing it back in front, the puck—which was going way wide—bounced off Jake McCabe’s foot and back into the crease, where it bounced off Bobrovsky and into the net.
With time to make a proper play, McKenna chose to rush a breakout with a weak attempt, and he wasn’t even looking properly, as he had to spin to make it. The game was generally fine to that point—the Leafs got off to a pretty decent start, the Habs generated a mini-pushback, and there wasn’t a ton happening. The gift from the Leafs set the tone for the rest of the night, not only for McKenna but apparently for most of the team.
The second goal had a similar feel from the Leafs’ perspective, although it was arguably worse. McKenna is an 18-year-old who hasn’t even played 20 games in the league yet. Brandon Duhaime is 29 and was playing his 395th NHL game. Even more bizarre, Duhaime had the puck outside the Leafs’ zone and inexplicably shot it back across the ice to absolutely nobody. The Habs raced to the puck, gained the zone, cycled it to the point, and then got it to the net, where they tipped home the point shot. McCabe stood beside Newhook as he scored rather than actively tying down the stick.
Just like that, in a period where the Leafs actually generated a decent amount offensively, they were down multiple goals.
The second period was more of the same. The Leafs generally controlled play and created the better chances, including a shift where they hemmed in the Habs for 2:03. By the end of the second period, high-danger chances were 11-5 in favour of the Leafs, who recorded roughly a minute more of zone time. But they again gave Montreal a goal.
Once again, it came off the stick of McKenna, who tried to force a cross-ice pass in the offensive zone across the blue line. Chris Kreider easily picked it off and skated all the way down the ice for a breakaway goal. That really felt like a backbreaker, given the Leafs created so many chances and just couldn’t buy one past Fowler in the second period. It really sucked the wind out of them for the rest of the period.
In the third period, the Leafs found some life. They didn’t exactly come out guns blazing, but they got a power play in a scrum where they easily could have gotten one too, and they made the Habs pay. The Leafs were dangerous on this power play and created a number of looks, eventually scoring as they worked it around the top. Matthews went up top to Raddysh, who teed up Nylander to one-time it home short side.
Suddenly, the Leafs had hope, and a minute later, they made it a game. Off an icing call, Colton Sissons won the faceoff cleanly, McKenna rolled to the top, and Joshua set a pick, taking two Habs with him and opening up space for McKenna, who took a step in and passed it to Joshua. The play somewhat handcuffed him, but Joshua shoveled it to the net, where the Leafs jammed away. Eventually, the puck squeaked out to McKenna, who put in the rebound.
Unfortunately, that was about the closest the Leafs came to tying this game. They didn’t generate much afterward, and the next best chance came when Cole Caufield beat Chris Tanev 1v1. Troy Stecher then took a penalty after a giveaway that would’ve led to a 2v1, and the Habs effectively put the game away from there. Similar to the Nylander goal, the Habs worked it around the top and set up a one-timer that Zach Bolduc ripped off the post and in.
The Leafs did get a four-minute power play with just under four minutes left, so they could have made it interesting again, but they couldn’t score. Matthews missed a number of one-timers; they somehow botched a sequence where the Habs had two broken sticks, and they continually refused to set up the Raddysh one-timer. Even in the final minute or so, it was still very casual from the Leafs when they should have been pressing. They didn’t lose the game on that power play, but they did have a chance to pull something out there, and it wasn’t good enough.
Ultimately, neither was their performance on the whole.
Post-Game Notes
- Sergei Bobrovsky will take a ton of heat after this game, and he’s now 3-6-2 on the season with an .886 save percentage. I do find it hard to really blame any of the goals on him. The first was a puck going well wide that deflected off McCabe and bounced back; the second was a tipped shot right in front of him (which basically no goalie confidently or consistently saves); the third was a breakaway from the far blue line; the fourth was a peppered one-timer that went off the post and in. The first three goals were all off egregious turnovers, too. At the same time, high-danger chances were 11-5 for the Leafs after 40, with about a minute more zone time, and they were losing 3-0. If the teams switched goalies in this game, I’d be fairly confident the Leafs would win. Both things can be true here: Bobrovsky wasn’t really to blame for any of the goals, but in pretty much every game he’s started, he has been the second-best goalie on the ice. The Leafs aren’t good enough to win games with that going on.
- Morgan Rielly left the game in the first period with a lower-body injury and did not return. Given he leads the Leafs defense in scoring, he would have helped. Darren Raddysh also played an outrageous 29:43 due to his absence. It’s maybe even more surprising that despite playing half the game, Raddysh still recorded just one shot on net. He was never going to repeat his 22-goal season, but they aren’t even attempting to tee him up most of the time. He did tee up Nylander well for his goal, though.
- Jake McCabe played 22:27 and was -3 on the night. In 18 games this season, McCabe has now been outscored 9-16 at 5v5, and he’s getting tilted in every metric. Yes, they ask a lot of him defensively, and yes, when they first acquired him, he could do it. But so far this season, he isn’t even close. His results match his play, but the other options on the left aren’t exactly good, either. It is a real problem.
- With Rielly out, Oliver Ekman-Larsson played 20:24, his second-highest mark of the season (the highest was the blowout vs. CBJ when McCabe got hurt). He still managed not to record a shot and is sitting on one point on the season.
- A lot of attention will fall on Gavin McKenna after this one. There’s no real sugarcoating it: he gave away two goals. He’s now getting outscored 6-12 at 5v5 this season, and he’s clearly not even close to a 200-foot player. That is fine; he is 18 years old. That’s also why it’s justifiable not to shoehorn him into the top six. He’s not ready for it, and he largely struggled in this game until the Leafs were comfortably down (and even then). All that said, credit to him for coming back in the third period and scoring what was a big goal at the time. That is a good sign for his future: he blocked it out, came back in the third, and contributed. Right now, though, the growing pains are real.
- I thought William Nylander was by far the Leafs’ most dangerous player in this game. He put four shots on net, was tied for the team lead, scored a goal, and hit the bar twice. It was one of his better games in a while, and it’s likely no coincidence that it came when he got a better player on his line in John Tavares. I figured the Leafs would have Tavares take basically all the faceoffs on that line despite playing wing, since Paul is below 45 percent on the season and Tavares is one of the best faceoff men in the league, but Paul was taking regular faceoffs. He went 1/7 that night and took offensive-zone faceoffs instead of Tavares at points, which is obviously illogical. That said, Tavares took a number of power-play faceoffs and went 3/11, so he wasn’t much better. Still, I’d trust Tavares over Paul any day in the faceoff circle.
- Nick Paul, by the way, has two points in his last 16 games. One was an empty-netter, and one was an errant pass that got deflected, which Nylander scooped up for a breakaway against Vancouver. That is it. When the Leafs were down late, they put Jack Roslovic at center over him and moved McKenna up.
- The Leafs’ penalty kill is clicking at just 70 percent in their past seven games, as they went 1/2 on the night. They needed a big kill to keep them in this game, but they couldn’t get it. They got off to a record start, but we noted they still give up a ton of volume, and now it is regressing harshly. They really struggle through the neutral zone with actually preventing other teams from setting up off the entry. When NHL teams can constantly get in their spots, they generally make you pay, and that’s what’s happening to the Leafs’ PK right now.
- It is getting late very early here. The Leafs have now lost four of their last five, and the one win came against the Vancouver Canucks. Their next four opponents are the Devils, followed by Colorado, Minnesota, and Edmonton. Two of those teams will be looking to exact revenge after the Leafs beat them earlier this season, too. If they don’t find a way to rally soon, we’ll look at this homestand the same way we look at last season’s January homestand that effectively ended their season.
- A final note: I don’t usually get too into this stuff, but the building was embarrassing tonight. Management and ownership should have been embarrassed seeing and listening to it. It wasn’t a takeover by Habs fans, but there were far too many Habs fans in the arena. I don’t care that Carey Price has been inducted into the Hall of Fame; it just can’t happen. This isn’t the biggest problem for the management group to solve right now, but part of the organization needs to look more deeply into what transpired here.
Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts
