The Toronto Maple Leafs lost in what has to be the weirdest game of the season.
First of all, the Toronto Maple Leafs began the game by playing what seemed to be a team of junior players. For the first 18 or so minutes of this game, I assumed the Leafs would win by eight or so goals.
The Leafs outshot the Krakers 9-3 in the first, and looked like they were going to crush them.
Seattle opened the scoring on a power-play, the Leafs 3rd in a row they failed to kill, I believe. Then Tavares tied it and all looked good.
Then somehow Seattle scored three times in a row and the game was over.
The Leafs finished the game with an Expected Goals rating of 66%, and it wasn’t even due to score effects (i.e the tendency of losing teams do dictate the flow of play as the winning team sits back). The Leafs dominated the first half of the game, then after Seattle scored three goals, it was more or less even from then on.
If you don’t believe me that the Leafs should have won this game, go check out the TSN shot chart which shows the Leafs had 11 close shots while Seattle had 4. To only allow 4 close shot-attempts all night is extremely impressive.
Like I said, weird game.
I could blame Murray, but he’s allowed a rough game every once in a while, so who cares?
It’s kind of funny: The Leafs lose to St. Louis despite scoring 4 x 5v5 goals (a rarity I’m guessing is on par with a baseball no-hitter) then they play Seattle and lose despite vastly outplaying them.
I’m not making excuses: those things happen, especially when you recently go on a 22-2-5 run or whatever absurd record they ended up through November and December. (stats naturalstattrick.com).
Toronto Maple Leafs Lost, But The Night Was Great Anyways
Canada won gold, which was cool. My son didn’t extend the time taping the game, and the tape ran out before the goal was scored, which wasn’t so cool.
I don’t really care too much about international hockey though, so I was fine, but it did remind me about the time Crosby scored to win Canada the gold and our PVR stopped before they showed the replay.
Later that night I did something even better than watching hockey: I watched the film version of my all-time favorite book, White Noise by Don DeLillo.
I had low expectations because movies always botch the book, and this book is really talky and not too plot driven, and plus the movies Netflix make themselves tend to suck, with Mank being the only good one I know about until now.
The movie ends with a surprise new song from LCD Soundsystem, which I did not know about going in, and which is particularly weird since they are pretty much my favorite band, and this is my favorite book.
What are the odds? Probably as low as the Toronto Maple Leafs actually losing their last two games. By the way, I loved the movie and rate it a full five stars.