Ilya Samsonov is beaten for the second of three unanswered Boston goals — this time by Brad Marchand — during the Leafs’ 3-1 loss to the Bruins on Saturday night at Scotiabank Arena.
The curtain is coming down on another disappearing act by the Maple Leafs offence
Spring after spring, the magic is somehow drained from Toronto’s sticks. The team has scored a grand total of seven goals in its opening four games of this seemingly doomed playoff run.
Ilya Samsonov is beaten for the second of three unanswered Boston goals — this time by Brad Marchand — during the Leafs’ 3-1 loss to the Bruins on Saturday night at Scotiabank Arena.
The current crisis in Leafland, with the local heroes down 3-1 in a series one loss away from another humiliating playoff washout at the hands of the Bruins, comes down to the most fundamental of hockey concepts.
The very idea of the game is to get the black puck over the red goal line. And funny enough, it’s the singular hockey skill in which the Maple Leafs, under certain conditions, are undeniably gifted. During the regular season, no team has scored at a higher rate than Toronto since that day in 2016 when Auston Matthews potted four in his NHL debut.
And yet during the playoffs, spring after spring, the magic is somehow drained from Toronto’s sticks. At a time of year when ratcheted-up defences unleash a more vicious species of guard dog into the slot and the neutral zone, the Leafs perennially morph into one of the lowest-scoring teams in the league.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
And here they are again. The team that scored two goals in each of its final seven playoff games last spring has scored a grand total of seven in its opening four games of this seemingly doomed playoff run. Seven goals in four games. Zach Hyman, the former Leaf now playing in Edmonton, has six goals in three games all by himself this post-season. Steven Stamkos, at age 34, has five playoff goals for the Lightning.
No wonder members of the Leafs’ Core Four were caught on camera Saturday night bickering on the bench.
“We’re not yelling at each other because we hate each other,” Mitch Marner, Saturday’s lone Toronto goal scorer, said in the wake of Saturday’s 3-1 loss. “We just want to all be on the same page and help each other out to get the best offensive chance.”
Perhaps this isn’t a new plot line — a frustrated fan base booing the Leafs off the ice at times Saturday — because playoff goals aren’t often scored with skill alone. They’re often scored with urgent forechecks and desperate net-front roughhousing, often attributed to ferocity as much as finesse. The bulk of Saturday’s Game 4 was bereft of any real urgency or palpable desperation from the home team.
There wasn’t much skill displayed, either. Passes meant to go tape-to-tape went tape-to-turnover. The Leafs were both emotionally ineffectual and technically inefficient.
“Just a little tight” is how head coach Sheldon Keefe described it.
Whatever it was, considering the stakes, it was inexcusable.
Post-season play is supposed to heighten a team’s intensity. Somehow it mostly seems to shrink the Leafs’.
The series isn’t over. The Bruins blew a 3-1 series lead en route to elimination in last season’s opening round. But it’s not ideal that Matthews, who’d missed practices in the lead-up to the contest, didn’t even come out for the third period, pulled by doctors, according to Keefe. He’s been sick, and also presumably sick of losing playoff games. Still, that doesn’t exactly explain why the most prolific regular-season goal scorer in the league has one goal in his most recent nine playoff games. William Nylander, playing in his first game in 10 days and his first of the playoffs after battling an undisclosed ailment, wasn’t much help.
Saturday’s obligatory third-period flash of furious desire was welcomed. But it was also too little, too late.
It’s an annual pattern repeating itself. The Leafs are getting out-goalied here, sure. The Bruins boast a .944 team save percentage, the best in the playoffs. Toronto’s work in the blue paint, by contrast, goes into Tuesday’s Game 5 at a mediocre .872.
But for the Leafs, ultimately it comes down to the inability to get the biscuit into the basket. Elsewhere in the league, it’s not as though other teams aren’t seeing their high-powered regular-season offence translate to the post-season scoreboard. Going back to the 2019 post-season, the Oilers and Avalanche are averaging 3.82 and 3.79 playoff goals a game, respectively — more than a goal a game apiece more than Toronto over that span.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
It doesn’t help the Leafs have a penalty kill that’s often hapless. When Brad Marchand scored the Boston power-play goal that made it 2-0 midway through the second period, it came after the Bruins picked the Leafs apart with pinpoint passing through gaping lanes. Boston’s power play has six goals in four games, converting at a ridiculous 46 per cent.
It’s a double whammy that Toronto’s power play is 1-for-14 with the man advantage in the series — a beyond dismal seven per cent.
A pre-game ceremony honoured the memory of Bob Cole, the “Hockey Night in Canada” play-by-play legend who died this past week at age 90. Even Cole, who called some of the iconic goals of Leafs playoff runs of yore, would have had difficulty making Saturday’s performance sound compelling. High drama was Cole’s specialty. In the most important moment of the season, this was a low-event letdown.
Dave
Feschuk is a Toronto-based sports columnist for the Star.
Follow him on Twitter: @dfeschuk
To join the conversation set a first and last name in your user profile.
Sign in or register for free to join the Conversation