Toronto Maple Leafs Get Smashed by Avs, Samsonov Earns a Point
The Toronto Maple Leafs played a horrible game on Wednesday night.
Taking on the Avalanche after their recent horrible performance against Buffalo on Monday, you’d think the Toronto Maple Leafs would have put up a better effort.
They did not.
They played horrible and could have lost by six goals, if not for the heroics of Ilya Samsonov.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Samsonov Takes Back the Net
Ilya Samsonov had a great game. It’s unfortunate that MacKinnon’s knuckle-puck tricked him in the shootout, or it might have been the single best game any Leafs player has had all season.
The Avalanche outshot the Leafs 29 to 18 and scoring chances were 35 for Colorado, 21 for the Leafs. (stats naturalstattrick.com).
In terms of Dangerous chances, it was a beat-down. The Avs had 11, the Leafs had 4.
Coming after less than ideal games against Edmonton and Buffalo, this has to be concerning.
The Leafs haven’t really played very well at all since the trade deadline, and four of their five acquisitions are contributing nothing. In the cases of Lafferty and McCabe, it’s been less than nothing.
Outside of Justin Holl, the Avs feasted on every single blue-liner the Leafs have.
Outside of Matthews, Marner and Kerfoot/Jarnkrok every single line the Leafs put out there got dusted.
Sheldon Keefe’s lines aren’t working. His defensive pairings aren’t working. The team seems confused about why a Presidents Trophy competing team needed to change a third of its roster midway through what was likely going to be a record.
Liljegren, Engvall, Sandin, Bunting and Samsonov were all having great seasons, getting excellent results. Suddenly, no thanks, we’re bringing in some ringers. That can’t have set well with the whole team. At the very least, it’s confusing. At worst, it’s destructive.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have a ridiculous amount of star players, so even if they all went out and destroyed their depth at the trade deadline, and even if they made their team worse, which they unquestionably did, they should still be fine.
If they play Ilya Samsonov. I don’t care how many Stanley Cups Matt Murray has won, he shouldn’t ever start ahead of Samsonov unless its a back-to-back. I truly fear the Toronto Maple Leafs will play him in game one of the playoffs, even though that is the kind of magical thinking the Leafs told us they were going to eliminate from the NHL.
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Ilya Samsonov would be in the Vezina conversation if he was the starter of this team from day one. He’s won the net, and last night, he almost won a game that would have been unlucky for Colorado if they had only won by four goals.