The Toronto Maple Leafs were shut-out by the Nashville Predators last night.
Last week, the Toronto Maple Leafs played four games and allowed five or more goals in all of them.
So last night, they held their opponent to three *(one was an empty netter), but sacrificed their offense to do so.
Somehow, it was even worse.
Toronto Maple Leafs Woes
On one hand, it was nice that the Leafs played a mostly solid defensive game. Sure, terrible plays by Ron Hainsey and Jake Muzzin led to goals, but someone’s going to make a glaring error every night, and you can’t prevent it. (Muzzin, at least made up for his error by being the team’s best defenseman last night, Hainsey was his usual garbage monster self).
Basically, though, aside from those two gaffes, the Leafs played a solid defensive game.
But it was at the cost of everything they are good at.
Other than Matthew, Nylander and Marner, I don’t think anyone showed up on the offensive side.
The Leafs have more talent on their roster than any team in the NHL. They need to embrace it. What they don’t need to do is over compensate for a bad week (in which, let’s face it, they got horrible goaltending) by absolutely ignoring the things they are good at.
This team isn’t built for defense. It is built to skate the other team into the ground. It is built so that every line can win the possession battle and get more scoring chances then whoever they face.
Sure, goaltending will occasionally kill you play this way, there are flaws to every strategy.
What is becoming increasingly clear, is that Mike Babcock has no idea how to coach a team like this. He over relies on his worst players. He refuses to change his style. For a team stocked full of offensively creative players, the coach shows very little creativity.
I mean, why do the Leafs hard match anyone? They have the three deepest centres in hockey and their third line centre, Kadri, is used to playing top lines. The Leafs spend way to much time playing cute line matching games when they should just let other teams do it to them.
Look: The Toronto Maple Leafs played badly last week, but if not for the goaltending, it wouldn’t have looked so bad. The Tampa game was a lost cause for so many reasons, but with a little luck they beat Ottawa and Chicago and go 3-1.
Last night? was worse. The team looked bored. I’d rather lose 5-4 and enjoy watching the game then lose two nothing and witness whatever the hell last night was supposed to be.
The best defense is a good offense. Someone should remind Mike Babcock of that.