There’s no fun in the Leafs’ finish
ST. PAUL, MINN.— The games, at the very least, had been eventful.
As the Maple Leafs readied to play their fourth date of the NHL season here against the Wild on Thursday night, nobody could say they hadn’t provided their long-suffering fan base with plenty to talk about in their opening trio of contests.
All three games saw the Maple Leafs play well enough to hold third-period leads. And all three saw the Maple Leafs score precisely four goals.
That was hefty production for a team that, a season ago, averaged a little more than two goals a game.
So maybe it was worth asking: Could this higher-output offence be the product of a new-and-exciting game plan devised by head coach Mike Babcock? Um, no.
“We’ve scored. But we’re not interested in racing you to 10,” Babcock was saying Thursday morning. “The game in the NHL, no matter what’s going on right now, is going to be 3-2 or 2-1. We all know that.”
As if on cue, Babcock’s squad produced a rough approximation of the coach’s desired game. The final score was 3-2 — albeit a 3-2 loss to the Wild.
And yes, it featured a third-period lead that disappeared into the ether. But considering it came a night after the Leafs saw a 4-0 lead in Winnipeg dissolve into a 5-4 overtime loss, it amounted to a steadier kind of performance the coach had been seeking. Toronto outshot the home team 33-27.
The tighter-checking game, to Babcock’s point, went against the earlyseason aberrations going on around the league.
Heading into Thursday’s slate of games, the typical NHL team was averaging more than three goals a game — nearly half a goal more than it did a year ago. And goaltenders were failing to stop pucks at a rate that hasn’t been observed over a full season in about 20 years. It’s likely a small-sample blip that may or may not be explained by the World Cup of Hockey’s role in upending the league’s usual early-season rhythms.
Whatever the cause, it had been fun enough to watch. Of course, “fun” isn’t the three-letter word that ends in “n” the Maple Leafs are striving for. That’d be “win.” And considering Babcock is of the mind they could have emerged with a victory in each of their previous three games — that the team that finished 30th overall a season ago could have easily been 3-0 heading into Thursday — the coach presided over a Thursday morning team meeting designed to help “fix” some of his squad’s deficiencies. Positivity, mind you, was the overriding sentiment.
“We’ve got a possible four out of six points (in the opening three games), which if you tell me before it started I’d say it’s fine, but we could have had more,” Babcock said. “So, I’m a bit greedy. And so are the guys.”
More intense competition for playing time on this season’s roster saw a couple of NHL veterans making their regular-season debuts for the Maple Leafs. Defenceman Roman Polak, playing in his first game in place of the injured Martin Marincin, made the most of his opportunity, scoring the game’s opening goal on a mid-second-period point blast that beat Devan Dubnyk over the glove-side shoulder. And Jhonas Enroth, starting in goal to give anointed No. 1 Frederik Andersen a rest, acquitted himself well.
Enroth couldn’t be faulted for being beaten on the partial breakaway by Eric Staal that made it 1-1, this after an aggressive pinch by Connor Carrick and a weak defensive play by Morgan Rielly.
And maybe his only sin on Minnesota’s second goal — lifted over his short-side shoulder by Zac Dalpe on a third-period rush the Leafs unsuccessfully challenged as offside — was being a few inches short.
Leafs rookie Auston Matthews scored the power-play goal that gave the Leafs a 2-1 lead heading into the third. The decisive blow came with about seven minutes left in regulation, when Staal slid a puck through net-front traffic and past Enroth to make it 3-2.
Considering the Leafs were playing the second of back-to-back games and the Wild hadn’t played since Tuesday, it was a solid enough response to Wednesday’s gutting loss. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Jets’ comeback was the second time in the last seven seasons that a team emerged with a non-shootout victory in a game in which it trailed by four goals or more. In other words, what happened shouldn’t have happened.
“You want to close the opportunities you get in this league. You want to make sure the nights you’re good you finish it all the way through — you stomp on the other team’s will, so to speak,” said Carrick, the Toronto defenceman who scored his first goal of the season on Wednesday. “It’s hard to get the full two points in this league. You just don’t want to let it slip away. We feel as a team that maybe a couple of times it has. And we want to kind of reverse that trend.”
It’s possible the fix won’t be easy. Toronto’s lineup is dotted with six rookies and plenty of early-career youngsters. A lot is being expected, then, of players with relatively little experience. But that’s the nature of a youth-focused rebuild.
“Is it inexperience? Maybe you could argue that. But at the same time, we like to think we’ve got a lot of mature young guys, maybe young guys who are older than they seem,” Carrick said before the game. “And it’s our job to win the hockey game. Everyone’s got experience winning and losing games. We usually know what leads to which. So it’s our job to be consistent with the winning effort.”
In other words, goal-trading, rush-swapping, fan-thrilling hockey wasn’t being encouraged here. On Thursday, at least for one night, the wild swings were replaced with a steadiness that was more predictable, if not victorious.
“When you’re ahead, you’ve got to keep pushing. And when you’re behind, you’ve got to keep pushing,” Babcock said before the game. “The moral of the story is you’ve got to keep your foot on the gas and play right.”