Leafs lose ... just like old times
Boston — Honestly, it looked so strange. The Toronto Maple Leafs, standing on the bench or stock-still on the blue line, in their road whites, as the anthems played in May. A playoff game, the first in nine years, and there were the Leafs. Strange to see.
The game itself didn’t look strange, though. It looked ominously familiar, if you stripped away the playoff fever that arrived strangely late to the TD Garden, along with the crowd. The Boston Bruins looked like the Boston Bruins they would like to be, and the Leafs looked every bit the team that managed to outrace its flaws during the shortened season.
Toronto grabbed a 1-0 lead in the first two minutes, and then became a kite that was pulled all the way back down to earth, and not gently. Boston won 4-1 in a dominant showing, and the Leafs now have two days to think about it before Game 2 Saturday night.
The shots were 40-20, Boston. The puck battles went to the Bruins, and when the Bruins didn’t have the puck, the Leafs gave it to them. Remember when the Leafs played the Bruins well this season? This was like old times.
The Leafs were flying early, throwing hits, grappling after the whistle, and after Patrice Bergeron tripped Phil Kessel 98 seconds in, the Leafs’ power play connected when James van Riemsdyk was left alone in front.
It was 1-0 after 1:54, and then the Bruins began to lean, heavy and hard.
In the regular season, Toronto was out-shot by the widest margin of any playoff team since the 2002 Montreal Canadiens, and their underlying advanced stats, largely based on shots for and against, were awful.
But the goaltending was good, and the shooting percentage was great, and the Leafs secured a playoff berth for the first time since 2004.
This was the flip side of the rope-a-dope. The Bruins’ power play, when it was broken out, came very close; the Leafs breakout was a mess. Andrew Ference got away with a nasty little elbow to the head of Mikhail Grabovski with seven minutes left in the period, behind the Bruins net; Ference is good at sneaky hits, but this was simply missed.
A little over two minutes later Wade Redden — the old hand from the Battle of Ontario so many years ago — snapped a shot that Reimer only got a piece of, and the game was tied. It was Redden’s first playoff goal since Game 1 of the 2007 finals, with Ottawa.
Then shortly after van Riemsdyk hit the post on a short-handed rush, Redden got an assist on a Nathan Horton tip just below the crossbar with 11.7 seconds left in the period, on the power play.
On Boston’s third goal, midway through the second period, Kaspars Daugavins backchecked Tyler Bozak on a breakaway, and David Krejci went the other way and collected a loose puck off his own pass. 3-1.
Johnny Boychuk scored five minutes later on a goal Reimer will probably regret, and it was effectively over. The third turned into the Leafs defending the Alamo for long stretches, and the Bruins became the dominant team they had been searching for during the second half of the season.
The Leafs, meanwhile, were beset by their worst flaws. The fourth line punching tandem of Colton Orr and Frazer McLaren was of no use, and they barely played. The puck discipline was dreadful.
Nazem Kadri, who called this “a very, very winnable series for us” at the morning skate, was not a factor. Kessel, the Leaf who will draw the most attention in every way, was largely controlled, largely by Zdeno Chara and Bergeron. He appeared to have his wrist attended to and wrapped in the second period, which may not have helped. But the crowd barely had the chance to derisively chant his name.
This is what Toronto waited nine long years for, but happiness was never guaranteed.
Leafs fans waited for the chance for joy, and for the chance to be disappointed in a different way.
The Leafs, in the old-fashioned way, obliged.