Canucks hammer the lowly Leafs 4-1,
Kessel penalty shot marker, Bernier’s work lone highlights
VANCOUVER— If misery loves company, are Leafs who have an especially good game cold-shouldered by teammates?
Banished to the back of the plane? Disinvited from team dinners? Fined in kangaroo court?
Just a fleeting thought as this season of perpetual low points — like bum-tumbling down a steep set of stairs — grinds on to its inevitable conclusion, which won’t be quite disastrous enough to take an enhanced lottery-bead on Connor McDavid.
For valour beyond the call of duty Saturday, a hiss-boo and finger-waggle to you, Jonathan Bernier. Show-off, limiting the Canucks to a mere trio of goals on 34 shots — plus one into an empty net — in a 4-1 Toronto defeat, thus 0-for-2 in western time zones this weekend but just 0-for-1 with Nazem Kadri back in the lineup.
We now measure relative achievement on a sliding scale of losing goal differentials. Four-one, last of them into an empty net, yup, can live with that, even summon a smile.
And Phil Kessel, the endlessly forensically examined Phil Kessel, deking Eddie Lack left-right-left before popping it up and in under the crossbar on a penalty shot — the guy hates penalty shots — deep into the third, awarded for being hauled down on a breakaway.
Penalty shot goal No. 3 on the career resume for No. 81, 24th on the season. First and only goal ever allowed to Toronto by Lack. So there’s that. But nothing Kessel will get boastful about. Not in his nature, even in the best of days, which these aren’t.
Zilch-for-six on the power play told most of the story for the Leafs. “We’ve got to find a way on our power play to gain the momentum and not give the other team the momentum,” complained Bernier. “We had our chances.”
The other night, David Booth actually sounded sheepish about his first multigoal effort of the season, as if he’d somehow wandered off the reservation. “It’s tough. When your team’s not winning and you’re having a little bit of … uh … bounces. Those two (goals), I think the bounces just went my way. Over a year, those things kind of even themselves out. Those plays, just getting the puck to the net, what the coaches preach a lot. Get the pucks to the net. That’s where a lot of goals come.”
Well, that and hard work, which has been distinctly lacking throughout Toronto’s death spiral since the beginning of 2015, panoramically absent in Friday’s 6-3 loss in Calgary, but reasonably evident against Vancouver, if to no ultimate avail.
“It’s good to see that they’re going in,” Booth had acknowledged, careful not to seem too heel-clicking celebratory over two goals and a personal six-game point streak, halted here. “You just wish that the results were different at the end of the game.”
The apologies have been wall-towall for all these Leafs and they come across as increasingly insincere. This past week’s apogee apologia, of course, emanated from sleepy-head Kadri, reactivated for Saturday’s late matinee date against the Canucks, one of those enviable clubs engaged in a fierce race for a post-season berth. Kadri, having served his one-plus-two internal suspension for missing a pre-practice team meeting, was chafing at the reins to instantly prove himself a smartened-up and wholehearted hockey commodity.
Coach Peter Horachek — who’d subjected his phlegmatic troops to a no-minced-words address earlier in the day — had anticipated a statement game from Kadri. “I think he’ll be motivated, that for sure,” Ho- rachek predicted some 90 minutes before puck drop. “Just the whole environment, what’s been going on. I think he’ll be ready to go and looking to put a good show on.”
That was a direct challenge — or dare.
Unlike his battered and beatendown ’mates, Kadri came into the Rogers Arena rested, at least physically, if doubtless his mind had been churning the previous six days. “It gives him a break, missing some games,” Horachek had observed. “So he’ll be energized and ready to go.”
Not so ready and impactful, turned out. Kadri, sent over the bench with Booth and James van Riemsdyk to start the game as a pre-emptive first line, had a quiet outing. Nothing to criticize, nothing much to inspire.
“Today couldn’t come fast enough,” Kadri admitted. “Today was an opportunity for me to play some key minutes against a really good hockey team. I felt we played pretty well. Just a matter of getting a bounce here or there and it’s a different hockey game.”
Doubled up on the shot clock through the opening first, the Leafs were immensely indebted to Ber- nier’s agility as he made deft stops on both Sedin brothers. For 16-plus minutes it appeared Toronto would avert adding to its league-leading tally for first-period goals surrendered. But nah. Chris Higgins saw to that at 16:44, high-stepping into the low slot while Eric Brewer and Tyler Bozak helplessly waved their sticks, chip shot over Bernier’s shoulder.
Yet the Leafs were not terribly out of their element, industrious in the offensive zone when they got there, no grave errors, if still shooting blanks. The second period, however, spelled doom as Vancouver scored 22 seconds apart. Two clicks shy of another short-handed goal ceded (a brace of those surrendered on the same five-minute major power play the previous evening in Calgary) when Derek Dorsett came charging down on the Leaf net, two-on-one and only Dion Phaneuf back, to make it 2-0. The Leafs man advantage had expired a couple of seconds earlier. “I think I misread the play,” said Bernier. “He made a good shot, but that’s my guy. Neuf did a good job. He was there for the pass, but I’ve got to make sure I get Dorsett there.”
Barely one steamboat later, Bernier was flat on his back, helpless — bowled over inadvertently by Joffrey Lupul, it appeared — when Jannik Hansen made it 3-0, despite protestations of goalie interference. Shawn Matthias rounded out the scoring with Bernier on the bench at 17:02 of the third.
It wasn’t a smack-your-head loss, the kind that has left Horachek near black-and-blue from self-inflicted blows of woe.
“They played hard in the first period, were energized, played more physical,” he said afterwards. “And (Vancouver) still came out with that goal, a breakdown in front of the net. But definitely the effort was better than the night we had before.”
That AWOL PP was the gist of the matter for Toronto. “They get another short-handed goal. The power play, instead of scoring, gives up one. Whether it’s a second after or not, it’s still a short-handed goal to me.”
The banged-up Leafs were missing Peter Holland, out with a leg injury suffered in Calgary. Leaf widgets on the current roster included T.J. Brennan, Andrew MacWilliam, Brandon Kozun, Joakim Lindstrom, Trevor Smith and Zach Sill. Doing their best but, really, mostly just pallbearers helping to carry this coffin to April 11.
Even Horachek can occasionally find a funny wrinkle in this relentless disaster, on changing his lines and liking the chemistry on one particular triad from Friday. “I’ll try them tonight,” he said pre-game. “I think that will have (the Canucks) completely fooled.”
Where did you spot that aforementioned chemistry, Mr. H? “I think it was with the coaches.”
Mordant humour. But what’s a guy in this rotten situation to do?
He’d said earlier about the Canucks: “I’m sure they’re going to be hungry because of their situation. And we need to be hungry because of ours.”
But he’s been banging the drum for a heedless bunch, most nights, and this one was merely among the least bad.
What Horcachek said he expects from the Leafs in the final-month stretch: “Consistency with an effort all the way down through these games.”
Poor deluded man.