Clearly, the lead story tonight is Anthony Stolarz’s frustration after the game.
What were you seeing and feeling when Mason Marchment crashed into you?
Stolarz: I mean, I am not happy. Guys are going to run me. I am going to try to stand up for myself. I heard the ref say we got a power play, and there really isn’t much I can do to him on the ground.
Kudos to the guys who were there and got down with him, but like I said, we have to start going to the cage a little harder and make it harder for their goalies.
It’s not fun. I don’t like having 225-pound guys landing on me. Hopefully, we learn our lesson here.
Are you getting frustrated with guys taking runs at you?
Stolarz: I mean, it’s playing hard. Maybe we can take a page out of their book and start getting to the net. For us, we like to go low-to-high and shoot, but for their goalie, it is like playing catch in the yard. He is seeing everything, and we are not making it difficult.
We made it difficult in the third, and look what happened. We came out, tied it, got a point out of it, and almost scored with five seconds left. It is too little, too late. Even though we are six games into the season, enough is enough. We have to start picking it up here.
Is it an early-season gelling issue?
Stolarz: A lot of the guys have been here for a while. In OT, you can’t let someone beat you up the ice there. It is a clear-cut breakaway with a minute left. You want to be on the ice in that situation, you have to work hard. You have to work back. It cost us a point there.
At the end of the day, it is early. We have some time to gel. At the end of the day, too, it is more or less about working hard. When we work hard, the results come. You saw it in the third period. You can’t play for 20 or 30 minutes. You have to do it for a full 60.
… How many points are we going to leave out there? … The potential is there. We have the skill, the grit, and the grind. It is just frustrating that we can’t put it together right now.
The players on the ice — Brandon Carlo, the most conspicuous among them — appeared unprepared to do anything after Mason Marchment barged into Stolarz, until Stolarz said “enough is enough” and literally flipped the net over, dragging his teammates into it. Needless to say, the goalie shouldn’t be dragging teammates into the fight in his own defense in these situations.
This is now a clear pattern where the response isn’t enough from his teammates when opponents take liberties with Stolarz, and this is a goalie who has been their best player so far this season, one whose season ended last year due to a head injury (which greatly shifted the Florida series).
If we don’t tie this back to the lack of response after Easton Cowan was cheap-shotted into the goal post, the captain clearly seeing it and skating away, and the head coach’s subsequent “we got a power play out of that one” response, we’re kidding ourselves here. There were a lot of cliches spouted about togetherness and pack mentality early in the year, but the team has to look themselves in the mirror and decide what they want to be about.
The folly of ‘Our response/toughness is our power play’ was supposed to be a lesson learned by this team under previous coaches/managers.
After committing to the team long-term recently, good on Stolarz for not only performing/battling like he is in the night each net but also showing the leadership and urgency to speak up and demand better.
Post-Game Notes
– It’s frustrating how the Leafs‘ top unit must know they often find success with a direct puck to the net for a tip or rebound goal on the power play, yet will still turn around and pass up looks as they did on the Matthews-Tavares-Nylander sequence 10-15 seconds into their first power play. In the playoffs, they scored a bunch of goals by quickly funneling pucks to the net front before the PK could properly set itself off the faceoff; they had success with it in the preseason, and they scored the tying goal in the third period tonight via Tavares that way. In the last game against the Rangers, they scored their first power-play goal of the season by putting a puck at the net into a good area with traffic. With the (should-be) urgency of having gone 1 for their first 10, it was bewildering that they passed up those looks on their first power play of the game. At least they finally broke through in the third with the right approach (and at least they got more than two power-play opportunities tonight!).
– A thought that occurred when John Tavares absolutely ripped one by Joey Daccord for the 2-2 goal late in the second: That’s the first time the Leafs’ elite shooters up front — Matthews, Nylander, Tavares — outright beat a goalie with their shot in the first six games. Matthews has two empty-netters and two backdoor tap-ins, and Nylander has two empty-netters.
Speaking of backdoor tap-ins, I’m not sure how Auston Matthews didn’t end it in the first minute of OT, just like on Thursday, on the passing play with Nylander and Rielly. Morgan Rielly’s pass was perfect — flat and on the tape — if Matthews got proper wood on it.
– Rielly’s lack of a long-distance shot threat limits him in some regards, but when he joins the rush and gets a look in closer to the net, he is a really good finisher, as we saw on the 1-1 goal (one of many examples over the years). He picks top corners really well with his wrister from below the top of the circles.
As good as Rielly’s start to the season has been offensively, his pairing with Brandon Carlo hasn’t gotten off to a strong enough start (despite a good first game vs. Montreal), so it was good to see Mike Van Ryn try some different pairs back there, throwing Rielly with Tanev and McCabe with Carlo in the third.
Berube has correctly assessed that they’re not defending at their previous standard in terms of killing plays/cycles down low and protecting the front of the net, on top of some inconsistencies breaking pucks out cleanly. It might be worth a fresh look for longer than just a period.
– Carlo, specifically, is making some odd decisions and frustrating plays on the ice lately; playing the puck against NYR after the high stick prior to a goal against, shoving a player on top of his own goalie for another goal against tonight, getting outbattled in front on the McCarron goal vs. Nashville, among other examples. He took the fewest shifts of any Leafs defenseman for the second game in a row (26/25). He also played just 17 minutes against Nashville. We’ll see if he can play his way out of it a little longer before we get too far ahead ourselves, as Carlo has proven himself a capable second-pairing defenseman in this league. All I’ll say for now is that mental resets do become a good idea at a certain point, even for established NHL regulars, and Philippe Myers should at least touch the ice in a game at some point before too long.
– Not that this is saying much based on his first five, but this was Dakota Joshua’s best game in a Leaf sweater. He threw seven hits and nearly scored a really nice third-period goal where he made a nice move and beat the goalie, but not the post. 13:39 is a significant uptick from averaging 10 minutes over his last three. He’s putting in a solid shift on the PK most nights as well, but he really needed to show something more tonight after Berube scratched a player with three goals in five games to keep Joshua in the lineup. He did that to some degree, without an end product to show for it on the scoresheet.
– Steven Lorentz, who finished at 13:16 TOI, continued his strong start to the season despite a few games off, including a strong drive to the net where he nearly won it with just over two minutes left in the third. He shouldn’t come out of the lineup again anytime soon, and neither should’ve Calle Jarnkrok, which makes Berube’s decision interesting for Tuesday.
– Matias Maccelli played a team-low 11:38 in this one, and it was hard to argue with it. He made a no-look pass for a turnover in the neutral zone early in the night, and it didn’t get too much better from there, as he struggled to hang onto pucks and influence the game offensively. Maccelli and Cowan only played two minutes and change each in the third as Berube threw the lines in a blender and tried to manufacture some more energy out of his group in the final frame.
There was a lot of line shuffling, but we saw a good bit of Knies-Matthews-Nylander (throughout the night; not just the third), which scored its first five-on-five goal as a line on Rielly’s 1-1 tally. There were a few shifts of Joshua-Domi-Maccelli, a brief glimpse at Joshua-Tavares-Nylander, some McMann-Tavares-Robertson, and some Lorentz-Roy-Cowan.
Realistic expectations were that this would be a real work-in-progress in terms of finding fits and chemistry among the forward lines, and it’s playing out exactly that way through a half-dozen games. Simply playing the tar out of Matthews-Marner when the chips are down, and running the same top-six duos no matter what, is no longer in the cards, and Berube will need to earn his keep here.
– My first impulse was the same as everyone else’s, and this is not to defend some of his play without the puck this season, but I didn’t see the 3-on-3 OT goal as sheer laziness from William Nylander after a second view. It’s not like he was floating back and nonchalantly eased off as his man galloped freely down the rink, and it’s not like he didn’t try to get on his horse. Nylander could’ve played it a little better with his pivot and angling, so he could’ve skated with Muhara and impeded him more easily after Muhara moved the puck and hit the jets through the middle. But suggesting it was simply a no-effort backcheck is a little unfair to Nylander.
The Leafs ended up spread three wide across their blue line with Muhara bombing it through the middle after a pass over to the wall. As a quick example, if you watch the sequences a minute or so earlier, when Domi and then OEL are the ones defending after a pass over to the wall by their blue line, they sag back to the top of the circle while protecting the middle ice. At three-on-three, it’s not about gapping up aggressively at the line to prevent an entry or pressing to force a turnover in that area of the rink (by the boards at the blue line) if you’re Rielly on that play. It’s man-on-man defense, but it’s also about patiently staying goal-side and protecting the middle while waiting for the right opportunity to pounce or turn on a loose puck. Nylander could’ve played it better, but he was in a tough spot, and it wasn’t a case of downright laziness. Maybe Jordan Eberle circles back in the neutral zone with the puck vs. a bump pass into an in-flight Muhara, or maybe the Leafs are still in okay shape as a unit if he does make a play, as long as there isn’t a forcing-of-the-issue there on the wall (without getting any stick on puck to prevent the pass).
I don’t like getting into the weeds on three-on-three OT plays, but just my .02.
Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Game Highlights: Kraken 4 vs. Maple Leafs 3 (OT)
