The Toronto Maple Leafs should have lost their fourth game in a row last night, but because of Joseph Woll's excellent performance, they escaped with possibly their least deserved win of the season.
The Toronto Maple Leafs might want to start panicking:
Before this game, the Leafs had lost six of their last nine, and nothing that happened last night suggested that things were turning around.
It was a terrible game in which the Leafs were extremely lucky to hang on.
Joseph Woll Personally Ends the Maple Leafs Losing Streak (By Himself)
Shot attempts were 67-33 in favor of Edmonton, and that is an absolute beatdown. If they didn't get goalied, they'd have likely scored ten times. Shots were 32-20 at 5v5, which means the Leafs only got 38% of the shots. That is bad.
They say Craig Berube is a defensive genious, but I'm not sure it's all that smart to hard-match John Tavares against Connor Mcdavid. I realize its a road game and Edmonton likely isn't going to just let you have the matchups you want, but the line of Tavares with Pacioretty and Nylander isn't exactly a defensive juggernaut to start with, and the McDavid line cut through them like butter.
Oliver Ekman-Larsson was injured and didn't come back out for the second period, but in the first period he was brutalized to the point where shot-attempts were 9-1 Edmonton.
Overall, while the Leafs won, the fact is the Oilers are the class of the NHL and the Leafs don't appear to even be in their league at this point.
With the rest of the NHL getting ready ahead of the trade deadline, the Leafs are yet to bolster their roster despite playing several games already this year with Pontus Holmberg on the second line.
I felt bad for Rielly, Tanev and McCabe last night. The Leafs strategy of just having a few really good second-pairing defenseman isn't smart, and a team like Edmonton just takes advantage. All three were brutalized by the Oilers relentless attacks, and you can see the Leafs just aren't built to handle these games. (stats naturalstattrick.com).
Tanev and McCabe can form a great pairing, but the fact that they don't play behind a minute-eating, play-driving superstar makes it hard for Berube to deploy them effectively at all times.
Overall, this was probably one of the Leafs worst games and they were extremely lucky to get two points.