Toronto Maple Leafs: Don’t Go Blaming This on Poor Old Hutchy

The Toronto Maple Leafs lost a 6-5 barnburner to the Montreal Canadiens Saturday night.

This may have been one of the most entertaining hockey games I’ve ever watched, even if there were tons of frustrating things for Toronto Maple Leafs fans to scream about.

Like – what the hell was Kasperi Kapanen thinking (why was is the rule that that should be a penalty shot in the first place?)?

Or – Is this the real Cody Ceci? Cause if so, yikes.

Or – How exactly do you blow a three goal lead with that little time left in the game, while having a win probability of 99%?

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Canadiens

If you want to take one positive from this game, it’s that the Leafs are so stacked that they can play like garbage and still almost win.

I mean, I’ll happily take an L when Marner and Tavares each have to not score on two breakaways each (one in OT, on in the Shootout) in order for it to happen.

And there really were tons of positives: Nylander looks like an elite player who will challenge for a scoring title, Matthews looks like an absolute unstoppable beast, while Alex Kerfoot, Ilya Mikheyev and Trevor Moore all played fantastic.

That said, the Toronto Maple Leafs didn’t play particularly well.

The Leafs only got 43% of the shot attempts, they blew a 3-1 lead.  Montreal dominated possession all night, not just after the Leafs had it (so it seemed) locked up.

Montreal was just better in every way, all night long.  The Leafs, though, can outscore their way out of troubles, and that’s what they did.

It’s weird – the Leafs scored five goals, and Montreal still needed fairly awesome goaltending to win the game, even though they pretty much dominated everything.

For the Leafs, it’s a great thing that they’ve got the shooting talent to outscore their troubles, and as long as that doesn’t lead them to become lazy, that should serve them extremely well as the season goes by.

The team is off to a great 2-0-1 start, but you’ve got to be at least a little concerned that Columbus and Montreal matched and/or outplayed them for most of the last two games. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).

Ottawa has two or three players that could make the Leafs, so you really count that game as anything more than a gimme.  The points are a nice way to start (five of six!) but if the Leafs are going to be the contender we think they can be, they will have to start putting together more complete performances.

As for Don Cherry’s intermission nonsense – it’s completely laughable, and just comes across as someone who is sad the game has changed in a way he nether likes or foresaw happening.

Ultimately, it was a pretty weak game after having three games in four nights, and the last thing anyone should do is complain about the back-up goalie.