The Toronto Maple Leafs failed to come out on top yet again with a 2-1 loss to the Colorado Avalanche.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have lost all of their back to back games, this time even with Andersen in net. With Andersen playing back to back that makes this loss even more disappointing.
Once again the Leafs ran into a hot goalie, with Phillip Grubauer saving 38 of 39 shots. The high danger chances were about even, the Leafs had a good first, a terrible second and a fantastic third.
Per MoneyPuck’s new deserved to win model the Avalanche deserved to win 57.9% of the time over 1000 simulations and the Avalanche dominated xG battle 4.06 to 2.33 respectively.
Disappointment’s of the game
Morgan Rielly was again prone to many mistakes and had a very rough game overall. I do not know what exactly it is with Rielly, if he happens to be injured or just is completely off this year, he clearly does not seem like the same defensemen as last season.
On the plus side, he was partnered with Tyson Barrie last night and only saw the ice with Cody Ceci for 43 seconds. (Naturalstattrick.com).
Dmytro Timashov is not an NHL player. Timashov played only 5:12 minutes tonight and rightfully so. He took a stupid penalty where you really can not do that as a fourth line player, it is really frustrating to see a fourth liner take a stupid penalty, just get out of the way. I do not see Timashov as an NHL player and I speculate that the only reason he is still with the team is because he makes lower than the league minimum.
Andreas Johnsson left the game with a leg injury and did not return. There was no futher details on the timeline of the injury but we can only hope it is only a minor injury.
In any game when you need a goal and are paying three different players superstar money, I think it is fair to say that the Leafs star players did not live up to their expectations or at least their cap hit tonight. I expect better in the future if this team begs any chance at making the playoffs
Bright Spots of the game
The Hyman-Kerfoot-Kapanen line was the sole line for the Leafs to score a goal tonight with a great net front pass from Kerfoot so Hyman could get the tip in goal in his territory (the crease) . This line was the only line in the starting lineup to makeup for over 50xGF% on the team with an excellent 60xGF%.
I would like to also note, Hyman’s jam and physicality tonight added a lot of spark in the game for the Leafs to gain momentum and the home crowd to get into the game.
Frederik Andersen was once again absolutely phenomenal tonight and deserves nothing but a hug and praise, it made me smile on the inside when I heard the fans in the arena chanting “Freddy!”. Those chants were well deserved, Freddy saved this team from allowing more goals then they did.
The goals that the Avalanche scored were very tough to do anything different about. If you re-watch the Nichushkin goal where no one had any idea what Speeza was doing, I doubt you have seen something so absurd ever happen before, that is not a repeatable type of goal to occur. The Mackinnon powerplay goal was something hard to avoid with the amount of talent that Mackinnon has, he is able to do that on a nightly basis and this is something we should of expected playing a talent like Mackinnon.
Final Statements
The Toronto Maple Leafs are almost back to where they started with Keefe in the fold.
Making the playoffs is not going to be easy but, Montreal, Florida, Buffalo and Tampa Bay have had their own individual problems so the Leafs are almost lucky in that sense. They have a chance at a divisional playoff spot.
To do so the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to need to go on a run sometime in the near future, the star players need light the league on fire like everyone knows they have the ability to, because we all have seen it before.