Kids have to be all right to advance
’Tis the season to overreact.
Whether it’s over how the Maple Leafs lost Game 1 of their Stanley Cup playoff series with Boston, or how Raptors fans will likely lose their minds if Kyle Lowry and/or DeMar DeRozan are found wanting in their opener against Washington on Saturday, fans of both teams have a tendency to see only the worst possible scenarios when things go wrong.
Maybe it’s because the Leafs haven’t won since 1967 and the Raps have never won. Or maybe that’s what happens in most cities. Social media seems to accelerate the sense of a fan base in an uproar, that’s for sure.
On Thursday, the post-game suggestions for what the Leafs needed to do better to compete with the Bruins were varied and often drastic. Some suggested Roman Polak needed to be fired. Not benched. Fired. Sent away.
There was a suggestion that Curtis McElhinney should replace Frederik Andersen for Game 2. In past years, this was usually the time when it would become popular to suggest Jake Gardiner was really more suited to play forward than defence.
Let’s see if we can adjust this picture with a little bit of perspective.
For starters, the Bruins were the better team in the regular season and were at home. Game 1 was a game you would expect them to win, and they did, as did five of the other seven home teams.
Second, this was a 1-1 hockey game with the Leafs carrying the play early in the second. Then Zdeno Chara was caught holding Zach Hyman’s stick, and the Leafs had multiple chances and great pressure on the resulting power play, but didn’t score.
Just before the seven-minute mark of the second, Danton Heinen was sent off for chopping the stick out of the hands of William Nylander. Again, more pressure, more chances. But no goal.
This was a hard-fought, pretty even game, folks, until Patrick Marleau hauled down Jake DeBrusk with seven minutes left before the second intermission.
After that, it was all Boston. So to assess the 5-1 final as a blowout, as a game in which the Leafs were outplayed from beginning to end and demonstrated their unworthiness as an opponent, is a little misleading. That’s not what happened.
But in the playoffs, folks like their narratives nice and simple. Reality is usually a little more complicated. Five years ago, a much weaker Leaf team played a much stronger Boston team in the first round, and lost Game 1 in much the same fashion. Actually, the Bruins were utterly dominant in a 4-1 win.
What happened? After Boston jumped ahead 3-1, the series went seven long games.
Now, clearly some things are going to have to change for the Leafs in this year’s series, and at the top of the list would be the need to get offence from their shiny group of young stars, which includes Auston Matthews, Nylander and Mitch Marner.
On Thursday, they contributed no points and eight shots. The Leafs cannot beat the Bruins if that storyline remains the same.
The problem is, all three will be playing in only their eighth Stanley Cup playoff game on Saturday in Game 2. They’re still learning how much there is to learn.
Compare that to the most important Bruin forwards. Patrice Bergeron has 102 playoff games under his belt. It’s worth noting that in his first 18, he had one goal. He’s figured it out since then.
David Krejci has played 97 playoff games. Brad Marchand has played 73. All three have played in two Stanley Cup finals. That’s a huge gulf in experience compared to Matthews, Nylander and Marner, the players who must drive the Leaf attack.
The Leaf kids better figure this out, and quickly. Forget all the stuff about Polak and Andersen, about how totally ineffective Tomas Plekanec has been as a Leaf, and even Nazem Kadri’s foolish hit in Game 1.
What matters most is if Matthews, Marner and Nylander can find a way to approximate their collective regularseason production (76 goals, 193 points) in the playoffs. If they can’t, the Leafs can’t win.
In the final two games of the series against Washington last year, the Leafs scored only one goal in each game, both by Matthews. So that’s three goals for the Leafs in their last three playoff games. Toronto has managed one power-play goal in its last four playoff outings.
That’s a severe power outage. The youthful Leafs are riding a four-game losing streak in the playoffs mostly because they are learning what it takes to score in the second season. In those four losses, they have seven goals.
Nylander and Marner each had one goal in the Washington series. Matthews had four, but on Thursday, he seem oddly disengaged early, as if he wasn’t quite ready for the increase in tempo and general ferocity that the NHL playoffs bring.
This is a learning process for all the Leaf kids. But it’s the talented trio, the guys who are going to get the big money very soon, who have to learn more quickly if the Leafs are to advance against the Bruins.
It may not happen this year. Boston’s a tough opponent. But if it doesn’t, it’s part of the process. When those three youngsters are ready to win at playoff time, that’s when the Leafs will be ready to do the same.