Bruce Arthur: Unpredictable Maple Leafs escape with a win in the city good hockey forgot - Toronto Star
The Leafs needed this one to wrap up a four-game west coast trip. The schedule gets tougher fast.
A shot by Zack MacEwen (not pictured) beats Canucks goaltender Leevi Merilainen, who also had the Leafs’ Brandon Duhaime to contend with in the second period of Saturday night’s game in Vancouver.
Bruce Arthur is a columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bruce_arthur.
VANCOUVER—It’s not that playing the Vancouver Canucks is a no-win situation; for most teams the opposite is true. Saturday night, the Maple Leafs concluded an up-and-down Western trip against a Canucks team that sat last in the NHL in shot differential, last in both expected and actual goals for, and last in the standings. The Canucks won two of their first three games, and had one miraculous come-from-behind win in the 12 games since. This is the city good hockey forgot.
So, playing the Canucks is both the easiest matchup in the league and a chance to embarrass yourself. But this is a Toronto team that is defined by its mood swings, and they were all on display in a 4-2 win that was sealed with an empty-netter with 96 seconds left. After 16 games, this is not a Leafs team with a consistent identity, it is?
“No, no, no, I don’t think so,” said head coach Jim Hiller. “No, I think we’ve been inconsistent, too inconsistent. If there’s one thing that I would point to is, we’ve had some great moments in games and we’ve had some times where we just haven’t had a good pushback, so that has to be addressed.”
This game was a microcosm of the duality of the Leafs. You can feel the effects of the tank era in this town: Toronto usually produces sellouts across the country, but there were empty seats. The Go Leafs Go chants that ring out in every Canadian arena are usually countered by the home fans. Here, some went largely unopposed. And this Canucks team, boy. They stink on ice.
And after back-to-back losses, the Leafs are still short two top-six forwards, but defenceman Chris Tanev was back in the lineup after being sidelined by injury since Oct. 10, and was paired with Morgan Rielly. Anthony Stolarz started in goal after Sergei Bobrovsky’s consecutive losses, and in the first 83 seconds Easton Cowan hobbled straight to the room after blocking a shot, and William Nylander scored on a breakaway to make it 1-0. Cowan would return a few minutes later, but didn’t look entirely comfortable.
Neither did Toronto. The Canucks scored a power-play goal when Brock Boeser jumped behind Jake McCabe and Colton Sissons for a breakaway pass and turned Stolarz inside out like a spatchcocked chicken: 1-1. The Leafs failed to score on a five-on-three, and it wasn’t that they were playing down to their opponent; they were playing below them. The Canucks average a league-worst 21.1 shots on goal per game. That would be the lowest number since at least 1955. They managed 12 in the first period against the Leafs and outshot Toronto 9-5 at five-on-five.
HALLOWEEN SNIPE FOR AUSTON MATTHEWS 🎃🎯 https://t.co/aj2qgJ4IOg
But again, this is team mood swing. In the second period, Auston Matthews and Darren Raddysh executed a picture-perfect give-and-go and Matthews zipped it home for his 11th goal in 16 games. Former Canuck Zack MacEwen scored on a high point shot that slipped out of a glove and bounced in off former Leaf Luke Schenn to make it 3-1. Nick Paul hit a post and Vinni Lettieri hit another one in a span of about a minute.
The Leafs outshot Vancouver 13-4 at five-on-five in the second and produced a shocking 95 per cent of the expected goals. Matthews said it was about puck management, Hillier said forechecking. Either way, it was enough.
And then the Leafs settled into the couch to watch a hockey game in the third, Vancouver closed to within 3-2 and suddenly the visitors were holding on against a team that could trip over the blue line if given the chance. But Stolarz went for a goalie goal before Teddy Blueger corralled the puck and put it away.
Anthony Stolarz goes for the goalie goal but settles for his league-leading third goalie assist of the season 🍎 https://t.co/7BgSr64Fvr
“I feel like we at times play, you know, a good 40 minutes, a good 50 minutes ... (but) maybe on a night when you’re not feeling it just trying to bend not break, just kind of play a little bit of a different game, try to grind it out a little bit until we can find our legs,” said Stolarz, who made 27 saves. “And I think tonight was a perfect example of that ... in the second period we took over and hemmed them in. And as you can see, when we do that we’re a hell of a hockey team.”
Against the Canucks, yes. The schedule gets tougher fast — Utah, Montreal, New Jersey, Colorado, Minnesota, Edmonton — so this was a game the Leafs needed. After all, if you can’t find consistent quality, you can at least win the games everyone is supposed to win. And still, this version of the Leafs veers from thrilling to terrifying to a depressing sort of mess, sometimes within the same game. Of course, maybe at some point inconsistency becomes a constant, or even an identity, if you do it long enough. Toronto has some time to find out.
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Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
Bruce Arthur is a columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bruce_arthur.
