The Toronto Maple Leafs lost to the Boston Bruins last night.
It was the Toronto Maple Leafs second loss in as many nights, and while there was a lot of extenuating circumstances, it was a frustrating game on many levels.
On the bright side, William Nylander continues his bounce back season, and continues to be the one of the best Leafs on the ice ever single night.
Alex Kerfoot was also excellent, Kevin Gravel made his Leafs debut, and goalie Michael Hutchinson did what every good back-up does – gave his team a chance to win while playing in a drastically unfair situation (again).
Toronto Maple Leafs vs Bruins
The Leafs were on the road and as such were not allowed to get Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and Andreas Johnsson away from Zedeno Chara and the Bergeron line.
After the game, everyone was critical of Matthews and Marner, but the criticism deserves to fall on Babcock.
The Bruins are one of the few teams in the NHL to stack one line with three elite players. Matthews and Marner could both be at the top of their games and they’d be hardpressed to be effective against a line that features three elite players vs two.
This is on Babcock. He has played the Bruins under these circumstances 20 or so times, and he refuses to adjust.
The Bruins aren’t a deep team. The rest of the Leafs can keep pace with the rest of the Bruins, but Babcock has got to move Nylander up with Marner (ideally Tavares) and Matthews to even have a hope of countering the NHL’s best line. (stats naturalstattrick.com).
Additionally, Babcock hurt the Leafs by inexplicably using his back-up goalie against the best team, while using his starter vs a bad team the night before. The only thing more non-sensical than this strategy is Babcock’s explanation for it.
And Babcock continued to hardmatch the defensively pathetic Rielly/Ceci line against the Bruins best players when he could, which was whenever he wanted, because what team wouldn’t appreciate a bad decision by their opponent? The only way this strategy makes sense is if he’s trying to get himself some free time over the holidays.
Remember Boston was at home, so Babcock shouldn’t have been able to use his preferred defensive pairing against the Bruins top line. But the top five players the Leafs “top pairing” faced? I’ll give you five guesses, and if you get one wrong…..
Just an absolutely pathetic coaching performance. The Bruins probably couldn’t believe their good fortune.
All that said, the Bruins are a great team. The Toronto Maple Leafs were playing them on the road, on the back half of a back-to-back, without four core players, including their best all-round player and their Vezina quality goalie.
The fact that the Leafs even made this close is enough of a positive takeaway to feel good about it. Had they received even a moderately competent level of coaching, they might have won.