Toronto Maple Leafs Destroyed and Embarrassed in Long Island

The Toronto Maple Leafs game against the New York Islanders ended in a 7-2 defeat, but it wasn’t quite as bad as it might seem.

The Toronto Maple Leafs started out well, dominating the first period, and could easily have been up by several goals if not for the heroics of Islander goalie Ilya Sorokin.

Unfortunately, instead of getting a 5-3 for diving, the referee’s evened up the one penalty they deigned to call against New York 17 seconds in, and after that it was not pretty. The Islanders tied it at 4v4 then went on to score three more times in the second.

Marner made it close, but the Leafs immediately blew it. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

Toronto Maple Leafs New York Islander

The Leafs played alright in this game, dominated the first, and they have legitimate complains about getting just 17 seconds of power-play time.  The NHL officiating continues to be absolutely awful, and it seems clear to me the Leafs do not get the calls other team do.

No one will call anything on Bunting, Matthews historically doesn’t get calls for some reason, and while every team in the NHL has at least three 5v3 power-plays this year, the Leafs have zero.

Sorokin was amazing, and Samsonov was horrible.

But outside of that, the Leafs were alright.

The problem for most of this game, as far as I could tell, was that the Islanders blocked so many shots.  They blocked 19 to the Leafs 10.

At the end of the night, when Matthews has four shots, and Marner has only two, you’re not going to win a ton of games.  These guys are generally awesome, and both easily could have an extra goal each in the first period, but I think I noticed David Kampf more last night than I noticed Auston Matthews, so he probably didn’t have a good game.

I wouldn’t care too much about a poorly officiated game where the goalies were complete opposites normally, but in light of the Leafs recent very bad play (they are last in the NHL in expected goals since the trade deadline, regardless of halfway decent results).

Like, I don’t know why Keefe is so determined to break up Matthews and Marner, but talk about screwing with the ‘if it ain’t broke’ cliche.  Marner and Matthews / Tavares and Nylander.  It’s perfect and it works.

Also good last night was the McCabe and Liljegren pairing, which always posts good numbers, unlike the too-slow McCabe-Brodie pairing which does not.

Expect Keefe to break it up because if there is one thing he loves, it seems to be messing with what works.