Leafs shut down in shootout again
TORONTO — Shootouts continue to haunt the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The club dropped its NHL-leading sixth game via the shootout on Saturday night, Tom Pyatt scoring his first ever NHL shootout goal to win it for the Ottawa Senators 3-2.
Mitch Marner was the lone Leaf to beat Mike Condon at the other end, Auston Matthews, James van Riemsdyk and Tyler Bozak all turned aside. The Leafs currently hold the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference, but could conceivably be higher than that with a few more points in the skills portion of extra time.
“I think they need to skew the points a little more,” van Riemsdyk said after the loss, Toronto’s second straight defeat following three consecutive wins. “It seems interesting you can win a shootout and get as many points for beating a team in 60 minutes. I don’t think I like that aspect of it.
“It makes it exciting for the fans, so that part of it is good. It has that entertainment value to it, but you should be rewarded more for winning games in regulation.”
The Leafs were on their way to victory in regulation when Martin Marincin cleared a puck over the glass and was whistled for delay of game. The Senators scored on the ensuing power play, Mike Hoffman firing a one-time shot past Frederik Andersen with 71 seconds left, evening the score at two.
Toronto has struggled to protect third-period leads all season, though head coach Mike Babcock believed his team was in good position in this particular game prior to the Marincin penalty.
“I thought once we got through the first period we were a much better hockey club and played pretty good,” Babcock said.
Toronto was coming off a “terrible” 5-2 loss to the New York Rangers on Thursday night, as Babcock described it, one which saw the Leafs outshot 41-25.
Starting slow against the Senators, who jumped in front on Bobby Ryan’s first-period goal, the Leafs rallied with a dominant second period, outshooting the visitors 15-4 before getting their first lead on Matt Martin’s redirection of a Nazem Kadri (two assists) shot.
Andersen gave up a shootout goal to Ryan, stopped both Kyle Turris and Erik Karlsson and then yielded the winner to Pyatt. The 27year-old hasn’t fared particularly well in shootouts since he entered the NHL with Anaheim, his .621 save percentage (25 goals on 66 shots) ranked 44th out of the 50 goalies to face at least 30 shots.
“Throughout a season it’s a lot of points if you add them up,” Andersen said of losing in the shootout. “But I think the lesson here is to be able to close them out better. I guess that’s the best way to avoid them and get the two points is playing smart in the last minutes of the game.”
Marner has been the most successful Leaf in the shootout, scoring on three of his seven shots. Matthews is the only other Leaf to score this year and he’s managed just one on six attempts. The other five shooters — van Riemsdyk, Bozak, Kadri, Nikita Soshnikov and Peter Holland — have combined to go empty in nine attempts.
“Maybe the other goalies are good and maybe we’re not that good at it,” Babcock said. “It’s just something we’ll have to get better at obviously because we’ve left points (on the table).”
Babcock noted that the Leafs practice the shootout ahead of each and every game.
“I never watch shootouts,” Senators head coach Guy Boucher said. “I never have. Two reasons. One, I hate it. I think it’s a team game, and it should be decided by team play. But I understand that the game has got to end. The other thing, two, is I got into a habit of not looking. It makes no difference if I look or not so I let the guys do their thing.”
Now 4-1 in the shootout this season, Ottawa finished its three-game road trip with a perfect 3-0-0 record, sliding past the St. Louis Blues, Columbus Blue Jackets and Leafs. The Sens have won four of their last five overall, sitting second in the Atlantic Division with 54 points — three points up on the Leafs.