10 thoughts after a dramatic night in Leafland ended in a GM firing, a 5-4 overtime win, and 93 combined penalty minutes against the Ducks.
Overall, nothing can totally erase the lack of reply in the moment on March 12, but tonight’s response was solid, with Max Domi, Michael Pezzetta, and Jake McCabe leading the way. The Leafs went a full step above a ceremonial fight before playing out the game as if it were any other. They went back after Gudas again and again, dragged other Ducks into the mess that Gudas (and the league that should’ve suspended him through this game) made, and nearly doubled Anaheim in hits.
Domi was also the right candidate to step up against Gudas in the end. Bigger players were on the ice, but he’s the most skilled, experienced fighter on the team (over 30 fights in the NHL), with only Michael Pezzetta rivalling him in that conversation. It meant more for it to be Domi, given his connection to Matthews and that Pezzetta hasn’t been around the team for long.
To nitpick, while I liked that they went at him right away and more than once, it actually might’ve tipped into the Leafs spending too much time on Gudas, who was clearly just offering himself up as a punching bag and not meaningfully engaging, all while playing up the sympathetic character angle (which some in the media bought into, for some reason) with his injury. If he was just going to turtle, it made more sense (to me) to pivot to taking a pound of flesh from his teammates, as Gudas watches on.
The Leafs did some of that — McCabe got a subtle cross-check in on Cutter Gauthier that knocked him out of the game early, Pezzetta ran over Mintyukov, Domi fought Mintyukov, and Easton Cowan jumped in on Mintyukov after William Nylander bumped Ville Husso (among a few other examples). But perhaps a little more could’ve been done there, especially once it was clear what Gudas’ strategy was. To be fair, Pezzetta and Domi were both ejected by the midway point of the game, and they seemed to be just getting started. Overall, a solid team response.
The officials’ decision to eject Michael Pezzetta was ludicrous, by the way. The linesman veered Pezzetta away from an active scrum and was unnecessarily physical with him, and then he went spastic when Pezzetta very slightly jostled in his grasp. I won’t begrudge holding a firm line on zero tolerance for abuse of officials — and they had a tough job trying to keep this somewhat on the rails — but this was a real stretch from a power-tripping crew that seemed intent on putting themselves at the center of it all with arbitrary nonsense. It started with the early call on Jake McCabe for Alex Killorn’s flop, followed promptly by the non-call on the clear trip on Jacob Quillan on a 2v1, and it didn’t get any better from there.
The refs were actually fortunate that the Ducks’ early, highly dubious 5-on-3 — and the Leafs’ four minor penalties to the Ducks’ one in the first 10 — didn’t put the game more out of reach than 2-0, or it would’ve been open season on the game devolving into full-on circus mode. A fitting display of officiating incompetence that would’ve impressed the self-satisfied George Parros, no doubt.
I liked Matthew Knies’ start to the game, in which he basically ignored the puck and took a few runs at the Ducks, then engaged in a scrum. But it was as though he ticked a box and basically checked out of the rough stuff the rest of the way. By the end of the game, he was actively turning away from hits, and he didn’t seek out a fight. It’s a little strange that the two heaviest players on the team — Knies at 232lbs, Carlo at 227lbs — didn’t really show much leadership or initiative in the rough stuff. Now toss in the 6’4 Lorentz and even the 6’5 Myers, neither of whom played tonight in a circled-on-the-calendar physical game (and no one thought twice about their absence); an odd feature of the now-departed Brad Treliving’s Leafs team was that a good chunk of the size he added to the team just didn’t show much of the bite or “snot” he craved. The Treliving Leafs’ identity largely turned into a highly unappetizing combination of fairly big, slow, and soft by the end of his tenure.
On a related note, I was surprised Brandon Carlo made the opening lineup rather than Jake McCabe. Carlo has been on the ice but hasn’t responded to multiple high-profile incidents this season — Stolarz vs. Seattle, Matthews vs. Anaheim — and he predictably didn’t assert himself at all in this one, besides getting tossed over by Jackson Lacombe at one point and then offering no real pushback after Jeff Viel (who was a nuisance all night) snowed Stolarz in the third period.
We’ve seen enough good games from the Cowan-Tavares-Nylander line, including against some legitimate opponents, to think it might have staying power going forward. This season, they’re up 12-4 in goals at five-on-five and are controlling nearly 70% of the high-dangers (34-15). In the last five games, they’re up 6-1 with 79% of the high-dangers and 60% of the shot attempts. Even with a lot of offensive-zone deployment, those are head-turning numbers, given the team’s current state. If Tavares is indeed still playing at center into next season, the abilities of Nylander and Cowan to drive play off his wings with their puck transportation abilities just might help get him playing on the right side of the rink enough to make it viable.
In addition to really taking the “we need to actually stand up for each other” message to heart, Cowan’s confidence with the puck is bursting now; it’s funny what consistently significant playing time with good players does for young players with his kind of talent (who knew!), but he’s also a quick study and is making better and better decisions with fewer of the rookie moments we saw earlier in the year. It’ll be intriguing to see him in the fall after an NHL offseason.
Much is still to be determined about the franchise’s overall direction going forward, but in a hypothetical retool scenario, you could sensibly consider Cowan-Tavares-Nylander a possibility for next year, with Knies-Matthews in need of a winger, the team in need of an impact/dynamic defenseman (hopefully, Chris Tanev can play a role as well), while reconstructing the bottom six (Joshua, Groulx, Quillan are all in this mix). There is probably a viable path back to competitiveness there, with a good offseason and a better coach, but there are so many moving parts and much to be decided on the President (if there’s one coming), GM, coach, and rebuild vs. retool unknowns. Maybe some light will be shed on a few of those big-picture questions at 2 p.m. EST on Tuesday when Keith Pelley addresses the media.
Craig Berube has been forced to play Jacob Quillan a little more due to the Bo Groulx waivers situation (in St. Louis) and the Max Domi ejection (tonight), and he looks capable of competently handling more than the 9-10 minutes he was receiving. His faceoffs are a struggle — 20% tonight, after a strong night on the dot in St. Louis — but his bursts of speed and willingness to get his nose dirty are refreshing, and he’s making good things happen a couple of times per game. I’m not saying he’s penciled in as a lock for next season by any stretch of the imagination, but in a meaningless final run of games, he’s clearly worthy of a proper audition with respectable minutes alongside decent linemates. He’s clearly not so out of his depth to the point where it would be irresponsible to play him 12-14 a night.
It would be a shame if/when assistant coach Steve Sullivan is lost in the shuffle of the house cleaning that’s now begun, because he’s one staff member who has delivered in his role; the power play has looked pretty consistently organized and effective since he took the reins, even as pieces —including Auston Matthews — have shifted around or moved in and out of the lineup. The overall special teams, plus the team’s goaltending (though not tonight, as Anthony Stolarz did his best for Team Tank), are the biggest buoys working against the Leafs sinking into the bottom five.
To Cris Cuthbert and Craig Simpson: for the love of God, Leo Carlsson doesn’t have magical healing powers. He just wasn’t that hurt to begin with!
Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts
