THE BOTTOM LINE
Leafs simply can't afford to lose games because of their 4th-liners
TAMPA — The fourth line is not going to win this playoff series for the Maple Leafs, but the Leafs had better make damned certain it doesn't lose them the first round against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Through two games, the evidence is troubling.
Wayne Simmonds, limited at this stage of his career, played all of five minutes and 25 seconds in Wednesday's Game 2. In that tiny amount of time, he got scored on, while taking two penalties that resulted in two Tampa goals — and, really, that was it for the Leafs.
They weren't coming back from that implosion.
The great 20 minutes Auston Matthews played, setting up two goals, hearing the “MVP” chants at a fired-up Scotiabank Arena, were undermined by the Leafs' inability to play with discipline. The fine 23 minutes Mitch Marner played, with his second goal in two playoff games, with two more points, a plus-3 night, and six shots on goal, was undone by those who played the least.
In Game 1, Kyle Clifford, barely an NHL player, a curious choice to be in the lineup ahead of Jason Spezza, played all of 49 seconds before he was tossed from the game for an illogical hit on Ross Colton that cost the Leafs five minutes of being shorthanded — and cost Clifford a one-game suspension.
That was seven minutes into
Game 1. The Leafs' penalty killing happened to be superb and aggressive with Clifford out of the game — and that shorthanded situation turned out to be momentum-building for Toronto.
That was fortunate. It could easily have been their undoing in the opener.
So to recap: Two games played, three undisciplined, unnecessary penalties taken by players whose significance is limited at the best of times. Coach Sheldon Keefe made a decision before the series began that the Leafs were not to get pushed around by the Lightning. That pushing doesn't happen when Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov are on the ice. It doesn't happen with Brayden Point. That doesn't happen much even with the large Tampa defence. It happens when the fourth line gets out there and Pat Maroon and Corey Perry do what they have made careers doing: Throwing their opponents off and turning hockey games into pushing, shoving and punching matches.
That isn't the Leafs' game. They shouldn't try to play it. Tampa fought 35 times this season — among the most in the NHL. The Leafs, even with a willing Simmonds, fought 12 times as a team, among the fewest in the league. Trying to match the Tampa silliness has not worked in Toronto's favour and will not work in the Leafs favour.
Keefe would be better off moving the veteran Spezza back into the lineup, which would also make their second power-play unit stronger, and taking out either Simmonds or Clifford — or both, if they had alternatives. Unfortunately, they don't.
If you do the math on the series so far, the greatest Leafs concerns going in — how would Matthews and Marner perform? How playoff-ready is Jack Campbell? — haven't seemed to be concerns at all. Matthews and Marner have outplayed Kucherov and Stamkos to date. Campbell has been solid in goal.
The big line has scored four goals, one of them by Michael Bunting in his first playoff game. Through two games, the red-hot Stamkos has no points, while the brilliant playoff performer, Kucherov, has one evenstrength point. The Leafs have allowed just two even-strength goals in two playoff games. If you do that throughout the series, you should win. But when you take unnecessary penalties — and Alex Kerfoot took another one of those in Game 2
— you pay. Especially when the bounces go the way of the Lightning.
In Game 2, the first goal by Victor Hedman on the power play came when it appeared the Leafs had killed the penalty and thought incorrectly time in the period was running out. They also got scored on while killing a penalty when David Kampf made a pass to teammate TJ Brodie in the defensive zone, only to find out that Brodie had lost his stick. He couldn't take the pass.
The puck went to Tampa. Then it went into the net. Those were big goals in the first half of the game. But you can't play a team with the likes of Hedman, Kucherov, Stamkos and Point on the power play and expect perfect penalty killing.
You have to be smart. You can't pull a Kyle Clifford. You can't be singled out the way Simmonds enabled the officials to single him out in Game 2.
“I think I was the culprit,” Simmonds said afterward, taking the hit for his unfortunate night. “Took two, they scored two, we lost by two.”
The job of the Leafs' fourth line should be simple. Don't get scored on. Don't take unnecessary penalties. Stand up for yourselves. That's it, really.
In Game 2, they got scored on and took penalties that resulted in goals. In Game 1, they took a whopper of an unnecessary penalty and survived it.
The Leafs don't need the fourth line to win them anything here. But they can't, under any circumstances, have their fourth line losing them games.