Toronto Maple Leafs Play Bad, Still Need to Get Unlucky to Lose

The Toronto Maple Leafs began their roadtrip last night in San Jose.

Riding a three-game winning streak, the Toronto Maple Leafs were hoping to get their road swing off to a good start by downing the San Jose Sharks.

Unfortunately, the Leafs played poorly, and couldn’t get it done.

The weird thing is though, they still had to get unlucky to lose a game they had no business being in.

Toronto Maple Leafs Vs Sharks

The Leafs came out strong and dominated the first 15 minutes of the game, despite being down by a goal on a somewhat fluky power-play marker.

Then, with about five minutes left in the period, the Sharks turned the tables and the Leafs went to the dressing room to regroup.

They did not regroup, and the Sharks absolutely crushed them in the second period, but somehow they ended up going to the third tied at two.

The reason the Toronto Maple Leafs had any hope of getting a  point after two periods was Jack Campbell, who played excellently.

The second goal came as a result of a bad bounce of the end boards, and so did the third goal.

But with the score 3-2 San Jose, the Leafs almost tied it.  Though the play that preceded San Jose’s fourth goal will almost certainly result in a tie game about 99.9% of the time, somehow the score was 4-2.

Honestly, given the second period the Leafs had no business even having a chance to win, but they almost pulled it off.

The fourth Sharks goal was the result of trying to tie the game, so you can’t blame them too much on that.  The first was a power-play, and the middle two were absolute flukes.

You feel bad for Campbell because he had an excellent game, but sometimes you don’t have any luck and you let in four.

On one hand, it’s upsetting because the team appeared to be finding its game, and could easily handle a bad San Jose team.

But on the other, you have to admit that a team missing Morgan Rielly, Jake Muzzin, Cody Ceci, Rasmus Sandin, Andreas Johnsson, Ilya Mikheyev and Freddie Andersen (SEVEN REGULARS!!!) is lucky to even be able to ice a full 20 man roster in the first place.

So ultimately, I can’t be too upset about this game. You have to lose sometimes, and playing on the west coast at 11 PM without seven of your starting players is as good a time as any to do it.

The fact that they somehow almost scored their way back into the game, and lost due to a couple fluke bounces and an almost unbelievable save from Martin Jones is impressive.

Some losses haunt you.  But some you’ve got to just take and move on.

Nothing to see here.