The Toronto Maple Leafs just played their worst game of the season and should be pretty embarrassed by their performance.
The Toronto Maple Leafs just had their butts kicked by their provincial rival and it was the type of game that ends a coaching regime, but fortunately for Craig Berube and his staff, this is year-one of their reign and so they are essentially above criticism at this point.
The Leafs lack of scoring - even without Auston Matthews in the lineup - is quite concerning. The Leafs have scored just a single 5v5 goal in the last five games, which is atrocious.
What's worse, is that they have a 40% puck-possession rating over these five games. If you want to evaluate games in a very short sample, say five games, your best bet is Corsi because it builds the largest sample size the fastest.
One goal in five games is pathetic, but the problem here isn't a bad run or even that Auston Matthews is out. It's that the Leafs have consistently had issues with depth scoring - it's the reason they've lost in the playoffs for the last two or three years - and this five game stretch without Matthews has exposed them as being worse than ever.
They simply have no offense in their bottom six. Without Matthews and Pacioretty, they don't even appear to have a top six. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).
The Toronto Maples were taken apart and toyed with by the Senators
There were so many problems with last night's game I don't even know where to start. The Leafs were down 1-0 after one only because Anthony Stolarz is an early season Vezina frontrunner *though Hellebuyck has more or less already won it*.
All hail Stolarz, but what is going on with the coach? Craig Berube has been shut-out twice this year now and the Leafs hadn't been shut-out in 252 games before that. The Leafs new coach does insane things and no one complains because he's brand new, but seriously.....Bobby McMann is a poor choice for the second line, Max Domi should never be on the first line, OEL is playing way too much, and worst off all, what was Connor Dewar doing on the third line? The Leafs have way too many guys playing too high up in the lineup. And why does Ryan Reaves even play?
The worst player in last night's game was Oliver Ekman-Larsson, but he had tons of competition. Morgan Rielly looked ready for retirement, Simon Benoit managed to somehow be horrible at defense and throw zero body checks in a game where his team barely touched the puck when he was on the ice.
One reason the Leafs can't score: Dewar, Lorentz, Reaves, Kampf and Holmberg are all fourth liners or AHL players. How can you hope to score when you dress two fourth lines?
There are three elite players who could have shown up for the Leafs, but the less said about Nylander, Tavares and especially Marner's performances last night, the better.
Overall game gets an F. The coaching gets an F-. The Leafs recent three game winning streak was basically an aberration fueled by power-play scoring regressing to the norm, and hot goaltending.