FEELING THE BITE
Leafs can’t hold off Shark attack as California swing ends with 7-0 blowout,
SAN JOSE— Asked to assess the ongoing transformation of the Maple Leafs in the hours before their 40th game of his first season as their head coach, Mike Babcock lauded his group for their efforts.
“I think we’ve gotten better. We’re competing harder. We’re more organized,” Babcock raved. “That doesn’t mean we win every night. But we look like a team that has a chance.”
There are exceptions to every generalization, of course, and the performance that followed Babcock’s shower of accolades was as glaring as they get. Save for a saw-off of a first period that was played to a scoreless draw, on Saturday the Maple Leafs barely resembled the feisty, formidable team that had been one of the league’s hottest teams since Nov. 1 and split the previous two games of a three-game Pacific road trip with solid efforts against the Ducks and Kings.
To the contrary, the 7-0 loss to the Sharks featured all manner of ineptitude and ineffectuality that brought back memories of the nightly dysfunction that often revealed itself in the pre-Babcock era. If nostalgists had been hankering for a throwback showcase of lacklustre effort combined with brain-dead decision-making, there was plenty of both on offer from the visitors, who put forth a rare clunker in their second straight loss.
“That was a dud,” said James van Riemsdyk, the Maple Leafs forward. “That was probably one of our worst (performances) as far as just stupid mistakes, shooting ourselves in the foot.”
In a season in which much of the angst in Leafland has been directed toward the blue and white’s blue paint, it was difficult to point the finger at starting goaltender Jonathan Bernier for his role in the debacle
How do you blame a goaltender when Brent Burns, San Jose’s star defenceman, dances around Dion Phaneuf as though Phaneuf is a minor-leaguer, this before burying a high-glove roofer to make it 1-0?
How do you blame a goaltender when, a few minutes later, the Maple Leafs engineer one of the most disorganized line changes you’ll ever see (and on a power play to boot), and, while the gliding likes of Jake Gardiner and Peter Holland slump to the bench, the Sharks retrieve a dumped puck and fly in 2-on-0, with Tommy Wingels feeding Matt Nieto for the tap-in? You really can’t blame a netminder for any of that (Babcock blamed the bum line change on a power-play unit that stayed out too long).
You definitely couldn’t complain about Bernier on the goal that made it 3-0, either. One defenceman, Gardiner, was futilely chasing the puck into one corner. Another, Frank Corrado, found himself pulled into the opposite corner. All of that might have worked out if centreman Tyler Bozak wasn’t a beat late picking up Joe Pavelski, who was left alone in front long enough to one-time a short-range bullet into the back of the net.
Maybe you could quibble with Bernier’s work on the Tomas Hertl goal that made it 4-0. And maybe Babcock thought about pulling Bernier.
“But we weren’t changing momentum, I thought,” Babcock said. “In saying that, we hung Bernie out — I’m part of that, too — but I didn’t think putting in a cold Reims (James Reimer, who’s been battling groin trouble) in the third period made any kind of sense whatsoever.”
No doubt Bernier could have been better on the Joonis Donskoi wraparound that made it 6-0. But by that point, the evening was more than wrecked. It was ugly, ugly stuff from a visiting team that had been, as Babcock insisted, making impressive strides toward respectability. And the opposing onslaught came largely without warning.
Babcock had spoken of the importance of starting “on time” — “San Jose’s always a tough building in the first 10 minutes. You’ve got to be prepared,” the coach warned — and the Leafs played a solid enough first period, even if they were outshot 12-7 by the home team.
“I actually thought we started great,” Babcock said.
They didn’t finish great. Maybe the clunker was, as van Riemsdyk called it, “an outlier.” Or maybe it was the beginning of a trend that is seeing superior teams take the Leafs more seriously as the level of play ramps up toward the all-star break. Outshot for the fifth straight game the Leafs certainly have plenty of work to do in the days before Columbus comes to the Air Canada Centre on Wednesday.
Said Babcock: “We’ve got to get home and we’ve got to get freshened up. Because that’s not good enough.”