The Toronto Maple Leafs head coach, Sheldon Keefe, coached his 200 career NHL game last night.
It didn’t end up going all that well, as the the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs by a score of 4-2.
Ultimately, it was a one-goal game that could have gone either way, and likely should have gone in the Leafs favor, as they were the better team for most of the night.
The Leafs two best players, however, one again failed to show up in a meaningful way, and the Leafs let another winnable game slip past.
This one wasn’t really about bad luck though. Like the Vegas game on Monday, the Leafs played solid for 95% of the night, but a bunch of mistakes, and the failure of their two superstars to evaluate their games resulted in an unfavorable result. (naturalstattrick.com).
Toronto Maple Leafs vs Pittsburgh Penguins
Marner and Matthews traded chances with Crosby et al all night, and the final numbers say they played solid games, so this may just be confirmation bias talking, but given how good these guys are, and what we’ve seen them do before, I feel they can be better.
They can’t just be consistently solid, they need to be consistently great.
The Nylander/Tavares line has been fantastic.
The Malgin/Kampf/Reese has established itself.
Since no one cares about the regular season, I'm sure we're all happy that, despite the results, the Leafs have played five top team in a row and played five good games *(Ill include Carolina since they won and were at a serious disadvantage).
— Editor in Leaf (@EditorinLeaf) November 12, 2022
Nick Robertson and Cale Jarnkrok appear to make a pretty solid third line with Pierre Engvall.
If the top line gets going, and it’s really more like when they get going, this team will be unstoppable.
I hate to rag on Erik Kallgren, because he’s doing his best, but you can’t allow three goals on 23 shots. Holding a team with Crosby, Malking and the silky smooth, never-stops-being-fun-to-watch-him-play Kris Letang to 23 shots should all but guarantee a victory.
None of the three goals was like hang-your-head-and-cry-like-Jack-Campbell bad, but the Leafs win if gets one of them.
The fact is, the Leafs have played well now for five games in a row. If, like many
The Leafs Record Should be Much Better
Once again, it’s worth pointing out that after 15 games, David Kampf leads the team in 5v5 goals with three, and Erik Kallgren has played seven times.
Despite that, and despite the fact that Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are getting extremely unlucky when it comes to pucks going into the net, the Leafs are above .500.
Their record is mediocre, and their underlying numbers are not even that great. The early season sample size is tiny and two or three really bad games skews the numbers greatly. All you have to do is consider two most important facts, however, and the idea that their record should be better becomes indisputable and self evident.
- Pre Season 4th String Goalie Plays Seven Games Out of 15.
- Matthews, Less Goals Than Kampf at 5v5.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have played four games in a row against four of the NHL’s top teams. They probably should have won all of them.