Brophy on Leafs: Another opportunity lost
Posted January 22, 2012 10:51 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Beat the teams below you in the standings.
That has to be the golden rule for a team desperate to make the playoffs – one that hasn’t done so in six seasons.
In a home stand that consists of the Toronto Maple Leafs playing nine of 10 games at Air Canada Centre, they have not done a satisfactory job of this. The Leafs blew a 2-0 lead in dropping a 3-2 decision to the struggling Sabres in Buffalo (three nights after they had shut them out at home) and Saturday night turned in a rare sub par performance.
Oh, the final shots — 33-23 in favor of the Leafs — suggest they had control of the game and they were beaten by an all-star goaltender, Carey Price. That was not the case, though.
The Leafs had lots of soft shots that Price gobbled up without breaking a sweat.
Phil Kessel alone was responsible for seven of the Leafs shots and none stood a chance of beating Price. Kessel is among the NHL’s leading goal-scorers and has been a pleasant surprise for the Leafs this season.
Early in the year he showed more drive to the net and was being rewarded. The speedy winger would charge down the left side, cut to the middle of the ice and then power past the defender to get a quality unimpeded shot at the net. Now he takes the same path into the offensive zone, but not with nearly the same determination to get that clear shot on goal. He’s not trying to beat defenders; instead he’s shooting at them. Or he tries to squeak one through their legs … or fires 30-footers that goalies stop in their sleep. The drive to the net has all but disappeared.
Maple Leafs coach Ron Wilson was looking for a better defensive effort from the entire team, forwards and defencemen alike, when he juggled his four lines this week, but he certainly didn’t get the desired results against the Habs.
Wilson got it for one night against the vastly inferior Minnesota Wild, but two nights later the Maple Leafs were horrible in their own zone and the result was a loss to the Canadiens – a team that, in theory, should have been tired after playing in Pittsburgh Thursday night and then having to travel to Toronto.
For the record, Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf does not buy into that theory and here’s why:
“I said it yesterday and I said it today; I don’t think back-to-back games have any affect on the team that is playing the second game in a row,” Phaneuf said. “I don’t buy into that. I think we’re professional athletes and, yeah, the travel is there, but beyond that I don’t think there’s much of an advantage. There’s no advantage for us sitting here waiting for them. We knew they would come (at us) hard and they did.”
In fact, the Canadiens got stronger as the game went on and with the teams tied 1-1 after 40 minutes, it was the visitors that dominated the final frame. Or had the game handed to them, as it were.
Little miscues by players who had otherwise been playing well came back to haunt the Leafs.
With the score at 1-1, all-star left winger Joffrey Lupul got the puck at the side boards and had a chance to make a play to get it out of the zone. Instead, he delayed a second, had the puck taken away from him and it wound up on the stick of Montreal’s Raphael Diaz who scored on a low hard shot that beat Gustavsson. The Leafs goalie was screened by defenceman Mike Komisarek on the play.
Shortly thereafter, Toronto defenceman Cody Franson made a good play by shoving Montreal’s Lars Eller off the puck at the side of the Maple Leafs net, but he didn’t stay with his man. The puck found its way back to Eller and he lifted a shot high into the goal on the short side past a dropping Gustavsson. Game over.
The Leafs were upset on the play that their defenceman, Jake Gardiner, had been pushed into Gustavsson, but at the end of the night they only scored once so Montreal’s third goal had no affect on the outcome.
“Unfortunately, that one put the hole in our sail,” Franson said. “It was controversial, but it is what it is.”
Gustavsson, for his part, played well. He made two breakaway saves and seems to be getting more confident with each start. With James Reimer struggling to get wins, don’t be surprised if Toronto goes back to The Monster Monday when the Leafs host the New York Islanders – another team behind them in the standings.
With the Winnipeg Jets losing in a shootout, the Leafs remain in ninth place in the Eastern Conference. They are marginally ahead of where they were a year ago, but not where they’d like to be.
“It’s disappointing that we didn’t win it; we know it’s a big one,” Phaneuf said. “We talked about how big this was, and as did they. It was a big game for them, too. I thought we didn’t give up a whole lot. The first goal was the result of a bad bounce off the backboards … a lucky bounce. In the third they broke us. We talked about not wanting to break in a 1-1 game going into the third. There are going to be a lot of tied games going into the third down the stretch and tonight we broke. They came a little bit harder and that is disappointing.”
