Leafs hear boos, Bolts cruise
Hometown blue and white ‘pretty much quit’ in third, Matthews says after blowout
You could look at Monday’s night’s Toronto disintegration at the hands of the league-best Tampa Bay Lightning more than a few different ways.
You could pass it off as the dreaded first game back from the annual Western Canadian road trip; it was that, plus Daylight Savings Time, and the Maple Leafs looked to be inhabiting a time zone not of this province.
“We caught a tired team,” insisted Lightning coach Jon Cooper.
You could dismiss it, too, as the prod- uct of a couple of bizarre early bounces that saw the Lightning build a 2-0 lead on lottery-style net-front deflections. Those things happened. Then things got much worse.
But if you watched the home team get booed off the ice after two periods en route to a 6-2 humiliation, it was difficult not to at least ponder the idea that this was just the latest hint that the Maple Leafs might be better considered pretenders than contenders.
Consider Toronto’s record against the 10 best defensive teams in the NHL as measured by goals against per game, wherein Tampa Bay ranks fourth. After Monday’s drubbing, the Leafs are a feeble 7-14-1 against that esteemed group. And patterns are emerging. The Islanders, the league’s stingiest team, have neutral-zone trapped the Maple Leafs to death in two meetings by a combined score of 10-1. Boston, the second-stingiest, has beaten Toronto in three of four meetings and ominously beckons in the post-season’s first round. Even lowly Arizona, a good defensive team that can’t score, has game-planned its way to two wins over the Maple Leafs.
It’s during outings like Monday’s that you can get to thinking that Toronto’s status as one of the best offensive teams in the league is a bit of a facade. Toronto came into Monday averaging 3.59 goals a game, third-best in the league. But against those 10 best defensive teams, the Leafs are averaging a meagre 2.41 goals a game.
The Lightning sucked the life out of the Leafs early and watched the home team die quietly, Auston Matthews acknowledging he and his teammates “pretty much quit” in the final 20 minutes. “They’re just on top of you, their (defenders) are just on top of you,” he said.
“We weren’t communicating when we break the puck into the zone. We were bad in the faceoff circle … They were just better than us in every way,” Matthews said.
So sure, you could pass Monday off as a one-off fluke exacerbated by flu. Kasperi Kapanen called in sick. Zach Hyman missed morning skate and played sick. Even linesman Brad Kovachik left the game due to illness, leaving it a three-official affair. On Monday, the Lightning provided a compelling bit of evidence that they’re not in the midst of one of the best handful of regular seasons in league history by some accident.
“It’s no secret they’re having a good year,” said Frederik Andersen, the Maple Leafs starting goaltender. “We obviously want to measure (ourselves) against them.”
That they didn’t measure up was obvious. “Yeah, we were no good,” was head coach Mike Babcock’s blunt assessment.
If the Lightning got their share of good luck early — scoring their pair of first-period goals on net-front deflections — they were simply the better team in building a 4-0 lead in the opening few minutes of the second frame, at which point Babcock pulled the chute and inserted Garret Sparks for Andersen. And while Toronto made it 4-1 on a Matthews goal, a comeback was never in the offing. As Tampa showed off its peerless ability to control the puck in the offensive zone, the Leafs mostly ran around perplexed.
If you wanted to explain it away as another meaningless one of 82, certainly you could go in that direction. The NHL isn’t into playoff-race mystery, at least as far as the Atlantic Division is concerned. We’ve known the Leafs are on a firstround collision course with the Bruins for what seems like most of the season. We’ve known that, if the Leafs somehow manage to win their first playoff series in 15 years, Tampa Bay looms in the second round. In a division in which the top three teams are sitting around waiting for April, nobody is going to remember who wins in March.
Sure, Toronto has just one win in three tries against the Lightning this season, but the Leafs carried the play in both games played in the Sunshine State earlier this winter.
And as superior as Tampa has looked this season, especially on special teams, at five-on-five the Lightning and Leafs have been remarkably similar. Heading into Monday, Toronto had scored 172 goals at regular strength; Tampa Bay 170. Toronto had allowed 128 goals five-on-five; Tampa Bay 128.
Certainly they’re members of a mutual admiration society. Before the game, Jon Cooper offered an eloquent tribute to the marvel that is Toronto winger Mitch Marner.
“The one thing about Marner is, he is as smart a player as this league has not only seen this year, has ever seen,” Cooper said.
Walter Gretzky, who took in the game and received a warm ovation, might have raised a hand and suggested he once raised a son who exhibited hockey intelligence that verged into clairvoyance. Marner, who registered one shot on goal, was as invisible as linemates John Tavares and Hyman. But they weren’t alone.
Babcock handed some of the warm feelings back, lavishing praise on Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov, a likely shoo-in as both the Art Ross Trophy winner and a Hart Trophy nominee: “He’s obviously the most dan- gerous guy in hockey right now.”
That the Lightning put up an unconverted touchdown with the most dangerous guy in the game registering a single second assist — for one night, at least, it made the Leafs look like the opposite of a championship concern. For one night, they sounded more like admirers of the Lightning than peers, more aspirational youngsters than threats.
“We’re trying to build a program like Tampa has done,” Babcock said in the lead-up. “You need some wounds and all that stuff and you go through that over the years as you build your program.”
As wounds go, Monday’s won’t kill anyone. The question is: Will it make the Maple Leafs stronger? Or will it go down as another in a line of hints that the best defensive teams in the NHL have found a way to exploit Toronto’s weaknesses?