Summertime blues
Strangest of seasons still offers a familiar ending for the Leafs as loss to Columbus extends post-season futility streak,
All night, against reason, the puck stayed out. The Toronto Maple Leafs are built to score, and they loaded their top line with almost half a salary cap’s worth of superstar forward, and still the home team’s goal horn gathered dust. With the season on the line, the Leafs didn’t need to defend better or better goaltending, though they needed both. They just needed a goal.
And then they needed two, and then the game was over. In Game 5 of this best-of-five qualifying series, Toronto was shut out for the second time in five games, and lost 3-0. Columbus won the series three games to two.
The Leafs had been pushing all night and they were still pushing when they slipped. A line change that was so careless it was like going to a bar without a mask — Auston Matthews was gliding at the end of a shift, and John Tavares and Justin Holl turned back to change — and Columbus’s Liam Foudy left alone, a weird little shot from a bad angle that beat Frederik Andersen for a 2-0 lead with 8:20 left. Andersen had held them in the game. But it wasn’t a great goal.
So you can blame whoever you like. The Leafs deserved better, but they blew it, too. And it was an appropriately frustrating night for a team that was frustrating to everyone involved through most of a strange, underachieving year.
The Blue Jackets lost goaltender Elvis Merzlikins before Game 5 to an unspecified injury, and so went with Joonas Korpisalo, who was incredible. Sheldon Keefe, meanwhile, refused again to coach scared. He started Tavares on the wing with Matthews and Mitch Marner, with William Nylander at centre on the second line. And winger Andreas Johnsson was back in the lineup for the first time since undergoing knee surgery on Feb. 19, for rookie Nick Robertson.
And Columbus scored the first goal a little over six minutes in, on a lucky flip that hit Leaf Tyson Barrie, and the chase began. The Leafs could have scored. An Ilya Mikheyev tip hit the goalie and a crossbar, and Tavares hit a post on a shot where the only goalie was a Columbus defenceman, and had more chances to follow. That superstar line was almost a power play at five-on-five, but the Nylander line and everyone else dimmed as a result, and the goals still didn’t come.
In the second period, Barrie was crushed by Boone Jenner and was gone for the night, as injured defenceman Jake Muzzin watched from the stands with a mask over his beard. Morgan Rielly was already playing heavy minutes with everything he had. Andersen was making the big saves he had to make, and each felt enormous.
And then came the third, and the end.
Mike Babcock’s hymns about matching your will and your skill were true, but a double elimination game is more about how you channel that will, and how you all work in concert. That’s what group mental toughness really is. That’s what people want from this team.
“I really think that’s what it’s about, especially as you get to this point in the series, where you really get to know your opponent, you know what the games are going to be like, in terms of the structure and the different pieces, and it really comes down to staying with it,” said Keefe. “And that resiliency, the mental toughness, all that stuff is what comes to the forefront at this time.”
“If you feel pressure now, you’re an idiot,” said Columbus coach John Tortorella before the game, cheerily. “Because this is where you should try to enjoy yourself. Not many players get opportunities ... if you’re feeling pressure after this crazy series, and you’re nervous about tonight’s game, I think you’re going down the wrong road. I think you’ve got to try to embrace it, and try to enjoy it.
“You shrink or you get tall in these situations. I’m anxious to see who gets tall and who shrinks.”
Well, the third period was more empty calories than anything. They couldn’t do it. They lost.
Look, maybe you discount this whole thing a little, and maybe a lot, if only because the pandemic scrambled everything, and a best-of-five is a blip in a game where luck plays a role almost every night. Montreal eliminated Pittsburgh on Friday, on Sidney Crosby’s birthday. This is, for almost everybody on earth, a very weird year. But that was the game, and it wasn’t like the Leafs were playing an overwhelming favourite this time: This wasn’t the league-leading Washington Capitals, or the top-five Boston Bruins. Columbus, like the Leafs, had 81 points in 70 games. The Leafs were sealed off from the city and media that can supposedly suffocate them. This wasn’t anything but hockey, played with experience and scar tissue, expectations and ambitions, guts and skill.
And the Leafs knew what worked and what didn’t. Game 5 could have ended differently, but it was only being played because Toronto was flat in Game 1 and blew Game 3. And for that matter, needed a miracle to win Game 4.
The Leafs didn’t give themselves enough of margin for error, so another year’s gone. The salary cap never stops, but this isn’t a team you have to break up. The young talent is growing, flaws and all. A full year under Keefe will help. This Cup chase isn’t over, not by a long shot. General manager Kyle Dubas and Keefe have a lot of runway left.
They’ll have more chances, but all in all this season was a waste of a whole lot of talent, and now the Leafs have a 12.5 per cent chance at another No. 1 pick, and Alexis Lafrenière, on Monday night. But this series was the cumulation of everything that came before it, and so the end wasn’t really a surprise, was it? Maybe it should have been, but it wasn’t. And that’s probably the toughest part of all.