The Toronto Maple Leafs were swept by the St. Louis Blues in their season series after losing 4-2 on Saturday night. Mitch Marner opened the scoring for the Leafs in the first period and St. Louis-born Joseph Woll stopped 20 shots, both in a losing effort. After a dominant opening 20 minutes, the Maple Leafs fell asleep in the second period with the Blues scoring three unanswered goals, two by Parayko and one by Kyrou. The Leafs’ are in Minnesota on Sunday night to take on the Wild. The puck drops at 6:00 pm EST.
40-Minute Effort Not Enough For Toronto Maple Leafs
The Toronto Maple Leafs came into Saturday night on a two-game winning streak and the Blues showed up to the rink on a three-game losing streak. After 20 minutes, it looked like it. Mitch Marner scored his second of the season at 5:25 of the first, collecting a loose puck after a Connor Timmins shot from the blue line. The Leafs outshot the Blues 12-4 in the first, seemingly dominating play on both sides of the ice. “It was a real good first period,” Berube said. “You’d like to come up with maybe another goal, but it didn’t happen. We’re up one-nothing and we just didn’t stay with it.”
For Berube it was a special night, returning to St. Louis, where he won the Stanley Cup in 2019, for the first time since being fired last season. The fans gave him a standing ovation during a tribute video in the first period. “It’s great to be back. Spent some time with some friends last night, so it was good.”
It was in the second period when the wheels fell off for the Toronto Maple Leafs. 10 minutes into the period, after starting the second with a 1-0 lead, the Leafs were losing 2-1 and finished the period down 3-1, with the Blues outshooting the Leafs 14-8 in that same time frame. “I just think we got too complacent,” Leafs Forward Steve Lorentz said. “We were happy with our first period, and we were trying to continue to build on that in the second and that definitely didn’t happen. We kind of took our foot off the gas.” Lorentz scored with six minutes left in the game, but it was too little too late for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Special Team Not So Special, Again
Anyone who follows the Toronto Maple Leafs knows all about the troubles they are having on the power play, and have been having dating back to last March, but let’s start with the penalty kill. As a whole, the penalty kill itself has been pretty good. Through 12 games they have an 83.7% PK, which is eighth in the NHL. Not bad. The problem is that they have taken 55 penalties, which is 7th in the NHL, and a total of 121 penalty minutes, which is ninth.
Now that both Marner and Matthews are on the PK, they are putting key players on the ice for an extra 6-10 minutes a night, which is adding extra minutes on players you need down the stretch. Secondly, and more obviously, when you’re down a man for 10% of the game, your ability to be in the offensive zone is hindered greatly.
How Toronto Can Improve
“It’s understanding situations,” the Toronto Maple Leafs coach said about the amount of penalties his team takes. “Like, you’re in your offensive zone, there’s no reason to take a penalty there. You’re 200 feet from your net. For me, penalties, when you take a penalty it’s desperation around your net: saving a goal, some sort of a desperate play. I think at times we’re just careless with our sticks. We’ve got to be more disciplined.”
Ok, let’s get to this league-worst power play. The Toronto Maple Leafs are 3-for-38 on the power play which is a league-worst 7.9%, and it’s been this way since last March. “There’s not a directness to it,” Berube said on Saturday night. “We’re not getting pucks to the net enough. We need to get pucks to the net and create opportunities around the net on broken plays, but we’re not. There’s not a shot mentality on the powerplay right now.”
Up to this point, it seems like they’ve tried everything. They’ve kept the same units they had last year, they’ve split them up. They took Morgan Rielly off, they put him back in. There’s too much talent for this PP unit to be so poor, but for now, they keep searching for answers.
Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Minnesota Wild
The good news for the Toronto Maple Leafs is that they can silence the negative vibe in Toronto by Monday morning with a win on Sunday against the Minnesota Wild. It will be no easy task, however, as the Wild have started the season 7-1-2, quickly making themselves an early contender for the Central Division title.
Kaprizov is off to an unreal start with seven goals and 21 points already, and Gustavsson has bounced back beautifully from a down year with a 5-1-1 record, a .919 save percentage, and a 2.29 GAA. The Wild are 10th in the NHL with a 24.2% powerplay, but their PK is 30th coming into tonight at 66.7% With those PK numbers, may tonight be the night the Toronto Maple Leafs PP bounces back. Anthony Stolarz will be in the net for Toronto.
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