Toronto Maple Leafs Play Fantastic, Run into Bad Luck

The Toronto Maple Leafs played quite possibly their best game of the season, but finally had to pay for using their 4th string goalie.

It was a hard-luck night for the Toronto Maple Leafs who were goalied for the first time in a while, and somehow lost their 5th overtime game of the year. 

If just under 25% of your games end with you losing in overtime, you have an insanely suppressed record.

If you are doing it down 17 injuries, while your best player continues to shoot 3% and be outscored by David Kampf, you are definitely much, much better than your record. (Which is actually pretty hilarious if you’re already at the top of the standings).

Any time you have played more than two games and your regulation losses equal your overtime losses, you are doing OK.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs the New York Islanders

Rasmus Sandin, determined not to be the new Gardiner, got in a fight coming to the rescue of Auston Matthews, who was the victim of a pretty dirty play. (stats naturalstatrick.com).

The injury to Rielly was obviously the worst part of this game, and he’ll join Jake Muzzin and TJ Brodie on the LTIR and be out for four to six weeks with what some people are suggesting is an MCL injury of some kind.

For a guy whose skating is his bread and butter, that’s a really bad injury.

On the bright side, with Brodie, Rielly and Muzzin down, the Toronto Maple Leafs will finally be forced to deploy their best defensemen as their best defenseman.

Timothy Liljegren, it is your time to shine, my friend.

As for the rest of the game, here is what happened:

The Leafs controlled the entire game, having possession of the puck for 56% of the time, getting over 60% of the scoring chances, and over 70% of the dangerous scoring chances.

NYI scored 2 x 5v5 goals, while the Leafs only scored 1.   Ilya Sorokin made several incredible saves, including one off his blocker that would have put the game away, and which he maybe saves once or twice in a lifetime.  Pure robbery, my friends.

If you really have to blame this one on someone – and you shouldn’t, since the Leafs would normally win it nine out of ten  times – blame Sheldon Keefe, who turned to Jordie Benn and Justin Holl for more minutes once Rielly went down.

Big mistake, since those are his two worst players.

Overtime is pretty random, but not if you put Justin Holl on the ice.

And Jordie Benn was demolished when he was out there. Pretty much the only time the Islanders did anything, Benn was on the ice.

He was on for both goals, and it was unfortunate that Sheldon Keefe let him on the ice in the final minutes protecting a lead.

Still, the Toronto Maple Leafs are on a crazy run, putting up points nearly every single game despite an almost comical amount of bad luck this season so far.

Only three teams have less regular losses. Only three teams have more points.