Near misses are cold comfort
Kadri is getting lots of shots but few goals, leaving the power play looking for a surge
CORAL SPRINGS, FLA.— As cold streaks go, Nazem Kadri called this one “astonishing.”
The Maple Leafs centreman and power-play middleman has one goal in the past 14 games. Over that span he’s been credited with 41 shots on goal and 23 others that missed the net or hit the iron. That’s 64 moments in which he’s seen at least a flicker of a chance to score, some admittedly brighter than others. And in only one of those mo- ments has he been able to celebrate with his teammates after a puck crossed a goal-line.
Not that there haven’t been near misses.
“Is there a stat for that? Who hits the most posts?” Kadri was asking Friday, after the Maple Leafs held a spirited skate at the Florida Panthers’ suburban practice facility in preparation for Saturday night’s game.
There is a stat for that, as it turns out. The NHL has been keeping data on shots that hit the post and crossbar since 2009-10, although, like a lot of NHL-kept data, the veracity of the counts need to be taken with several grains of salt. In Thursday’s 4-1 loss to the Lightning, for instance, Kadri was certain he hit a pair of posts. He was more certain after watched the video replay of the shots before Friday’s practice. Alas, the NHL play-by-play report only had Kadri down for hitting one post Thursday. So while the official numbers say Kadri leads the team this season with four hit posts and two hit crossbars this season, he would argue, and with some video evidence to back it up, that his knack for near misses is being understated.
“I definitely did hit two posts,” he said, shaking his head at the memory of Thursday’s loss.
On Friday, mind you, Kadri wasn’t dwelling on the negative, and neither were the Maple Leafs. While they’ve lost three of their past four games — and while Thursday’s score line doesn’t scream out as an obvious accomplishment — there was a feeling among the group that their performance against the league-leading Lightning was a statement game of sorts.
Yes, the undisputed best player on the ice was Andrei Vasilesvkiy, the Lightning goaltender who made 48 saves in the win.
And certainly the Maple Leafs had their down moments — specifically a 35-second stretch at the conclusion of the second period in which they gave up a pair of goals that ultimately put the game out of reach.
But if you were committed to judging process over results you’d have to acknowledge Toronto dominated puck possession and produced piles upon piles of scoring chances. Kadri, for his part, is of the mind both he and his team are past due for a better run of puck luck.
“I’m a quarter-inch from having a bunch, so I’ve just got to stay with it,” he said. “Eventually, throughout the year, those things are going to even out, or at least you hope.”
Part of Kadri’s problem is a symptom of a teamwide downturn. Toronto’s power play has languished of late. After going 0-for-6 on Thursday, when they also surrendered a shorthanded goal off a William Nylander turnover, the Maple Leafs are one for their past 18 opportunities with a man- power advantage. While they were firing at 32 per cent on the power play in October, and they levelled off to 24 per cent in November. They’ve been successful on just 11 per cent of their chances so far in December.
“We came out hot (in October). But we knew that amount of goals wasn’t sustainable,” said Morgan Rielly, the point man on Toronto’s No. 1 powerplay unit. “We knew we were going to go through dry spells. That happens to the best power plays in the league. So we were ready for it.”
All of that is to say: Just because the Maple Leafs aren’t scoring in 5-on-4 situations doesn’t mean they’re not putting themselves in positions to succeed.
“We went over (Thursday’s power-play chances) this morning. We had lots of chances. We hit two posts. We’re doing good things. We’re getting chances. We’re getting pucks on net. We’re getting chances off rebounds.”
In other words, as head coach Mike Babcock has been wont to say: Don’t change a thing. Just keep on keepin’ on.
Rielly, speaking of Kadri’s Thursday-night drawing of iron, shrugged off his teammate’s slump.
“He’ll be the first one to tell you (about the posts he’s hit),” Rielly said of Kadri.
“But he’s been playing well. And it’s true — he has been snake-bitten a little bit. But he has been in the right areas. He’s been getting rebounds. He’s been doing things pretty well. It’s just a matter of time. The tides will change.”
That’s certainly the hope. Kadri, after all, led the team in power-play goals each of the past two seasons; in both years he scored exactly 12 of his 32 goals with the man advantage. This year, though, he’s behind that pace, with three powerplay goals through 32 games. Never mind a cold December; he hasn’t scored on the power play in more than a month.
So you can make a case the Panthers are the perfect opponent of the moment. Their penalty kill is pedestrian at best; ranked 20th in the 31team league. And Florida’s weakness in goal should be a welcome respite for a Maple Leafs team that spent Thursday repeatedly stonewalled by an all-world performance in Tampa.
The percentages say both Kadri and his power-play cohorts are due. According to NaturalStatTrick.com, no team in the NHL has created more power-play scoring chances than the Maple Leafs this season, which is amazing when you consider the Maple Leafs rank among the bottom of the league in power-play opportunities.
Said Mitch Marner, who had eight power-play goals last season and just one so far this year: “Soon enough everything’s going to break open. You’ve got to think soon enough the floodgates will open.”