Toronto Maple Leafs: Stop Me If You’ve Heard the One About Injuries and Bad Goalies

Once again, the Toronto Maple Leafs played like a team that deserved two points, but did not get them.

In perhaps one of the most frustrating games of the year, the Toronto Maple Leafs lost 3-2 to a Dallas Stars team that completely sucks the fun out of hockey.

Even though the Stars tried to turtle the Leafs into submission, it still took bad goaltending, a blind ref and yet another injury for the Leafs to go down.

The game was boring, and it was frustrating.

And the result was garbage.

 Toronto Maple Leafs Get Another Excusable Loss

The Leafs got only 3 shots in the first period, but that doesn’t really tell the whole story and saying it out loud makes it sound worse than it was.

The Leafs had the puck more than Dallas, they had 18 shot-attempts, they just couldn’t hit the net.

They also had eight scoring chances and one dangerous one, so the three shots thing was more of a weird fluke than anything else.

Overall, the Leafs dusted the Stars – 65% of the shot attempts, 56% of the shots, 59% of the scoring chances, 58% of the scoring chances, and 62% of the expected goals.  (Stats naturalstattrick.com).

Like they tend to do, the Stars played like garbage and relied on lulling their opponent to sleep and letting Ben Bishop do the rest.

It’s hard to blame him, because he’s been out injured for a week, but if Freddie Andersen can make a save on either of the two bad goals that he let in, the Leafs win this game easily.

In fact, most of the time, it wouldn’t even matter what Andersen did, because the Leafs could easily have had more goals if not for a combination of excellent goaltending by Bishop and bad luck.

These losses don’t get me down, because they really just illustrate how easily the Leafs will slice through most teams when they get even a tiny bit of good luck.

But that would also require the referees to do their jobs.  Now, I hate to blame the refs but the Leafs lost when the Stars scored a power-play on one of the weakest penalties you’ll ever see.

John Tavares – with one hand on the stick – allowed his stick to bump the shins of the Dallas player (lightly) who then earned an Oscar by falling to the ice.

The player – I forget who it was – should have gone to the box for diving, but the refs are garbage so it didn’t happen.

Of course the winning goal went in on the undeserved power-play.  That is to say nothing of the fact that the Leafs didn’t even get 2 minutes of PP time, while Dallas had over four.

Whatcha gonnna do?

Oh , and Andreas Johnsson is out “not short term” with a knee injury from bumping into his own teammate.  Which, of course it had to happen – the Leafs only had two injured players in this game and they must have at least three injuries at all times.  Apparently.

One day this luck thing will balance out and the Toronto Maple Leafs will be unbeatable.  In the meantime, I take solace in the fact that the Leafs only seem to lose in the most ridiculous and unlucky ways.

The Leafs just dominated a game without three regulars in their lineup, while playing two rookie defensemen, and facing terrible officiating.

What can you do!