The Toronto Maple Leafs: Michael Bunting, Nick Abruzzese, David Kampf

The Toronto Maple Leafs took the night off in Detroit.

On the second night of a back-to-back, the Toronto Maple Leafs sat Marc Giordano, Mitch Marner and Jake McCabe, basically punting the game before it started.

What followed was a boring, listless game I wish I didn’t watch.  I should have just played Gran Turismo.

On the backs of a Dylan Larkin Hattrick, the Red Wings easily defeated the lifeless Leafs and a game-in-hand vs Tampa to clinch home-ice was wasted.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Detroit

The Leafs actually played decently, dominating the shots and scoring chances, but it was a horribly boring game regardless.

Matthews only managed 3 shots 5v5 and only one of them was memorably dangerous.

The coach made the bizarre choice to give David Kampf – who might be the single worst offensive player in the NHL – a penalty shot chance.

Predictably, he did not score.

Weirdly the Leafs have had seven penalty shots this season (according to the broadcast; boring as usual) which seems like a lot, so I looked it up.

It is a lot.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have 7 of the 50 Penalty Shots awarded to all 32 teams this season.  That’s 14% of the total going to one team.  Seems that while the Leafs have been screwed over when it comes to 5 on 3 power-plays (they. have one, Minnesota has 16, according to the TV broadcast the night the Leafs got their one shot) they have balanced things out by getting a crazy amount of penalty shots.

That doesn’t really balance it out, considering you’re probably going to score on 5 on 3’s way more often than on penalty shots (I assume) but it’s something.

Nick Abruzzese made is season debut last night, and I thought he was good. He drew a penalty, and picked up an assist in eight minutes of ice time.  He was better than Sam Lafferty has ever been, so that is something.

Luke Schenn was paired with Morgan Rielly and they posted a horrible 30% Expected Goals rating, and were just generally bad.   Not sure why every coach wants to play Rielly with slow, bad players, when he always does much better with a puck mover like TJ Brodie or Timothy Liljegren, or even historically, Jake Gardiner.  (stats naturalstattrick.com).

Finally, the other significant event in this game was the Michael Bunting penalty and subsequent ten minute misconduct.  The refs are garbage, what do you want.  The only surprising thing was that the coach implied it was bad too, and he usually doesn’t.

Next up, Blue Jackets tomorrow.