Post-Game Talk: Leafs Lose 3-2 In OT

[meefer]

Geez, we lost, get over it. It does not define who we are. Shit happens.

 

[Wafflewhipper]

Geez, we lost, get over it. It does not define who we are. Shit happens.

We got a point. Thats not a loss.

 

[Cor]

Don't know whether to laugh or cry. FML.

at least the whistles tend to go away in the playoffs?

 

[meefer]

We got a point. Thats not a loss.

Ya, if that floats your boat.

 

[Bellzy]

Not sure if you're serious. Could you imagine playing an entire season like its game 7 of a series? Our players would be gassed out and injured before making the playoffs. We should have won the game. Shit happens. I dont think overall they played poorly, just more of running into a goalie who made some impressive and lucky saves.

Haha ya I was being sarcastic. People gotta chill

 

[Clark4Ever]

This season is all about playoff redemption, so the regular season is probably not the primary focus.

But ever since the Ottawa 6-5 party from last Saturday (where the Leafs were already showing signs of leaky defense, goaltending cooling off and eroding details) I feel like you can still pick up the faintest whiff of the Columbus series: inconsistent effort and lapses, running into a “hot goalie” and getting stymied by lower talent teams who are intent on disruption, whether aggressively interfering with speed or clogging up the neutral zone, getting caught off guard by overlooking an opponent.

Also, the grit grinder, physical elements and high energy leadership the Leafs brought in seem to be sagging down the stretch. Foligno will be very important and hopefully Hyman is okay.

The power play and goaltending issues aside, the one thing that has stood out to me as of late is that we have squandered too many scoring chances by being too cute and looking for the perfect passing play. That's not going to cut it in the playoffs.

We have to be able to play more of a North-South game and stick to the basics - put pucks on net, get some traffic in the crease, and score some ugly goals.

 

[Gary Nylund]

We got a point. Thats not a loss.

True enough. That one game in itself isn't that big a deal. We outplayed the opponent, lost cause their goalie was better but at least got a point. And clearly people who thought VAN would be an easy out because they'd forgotten how to skate or something were out to lunch.

at least the whistles tend to go away in the playoffs?

At this point I'd be happy to play the playoffs at even strength. Unfortunately, that's not quite the way it works. Not gonna lie, I'm super frustrated at this point, I keep thinking there's just too much talent, it'll sort itself out at some point but it's been so long now, I just don't have that confidence any more. I'm hoping, but I'm not confident.

I was so happy early on when our PP was awesome, I was thinking boy is this ever going to be big for us in the playoffs. And now, one of our biggest strengths has become one of our biggest weaknesses. 11 game to go, still hoping it gets sorted it somehow. All that high priced offensive talent ...

 

[hoglund]

To think positively, the Leafs haven't lost 4 in a row, they're winless in 4, but 2 of their 'losses" were in overtime and were ties after regulation.

 

[mrbagina]

The good -
4th line played much better than I expected, thought Thornton had his best game in a long time. I am disappointed overall with Simmonds though, he is willing to go to the front of the net but his passing is pee wee house league level and he has taken on this new turn his back to the player he is hitting.... every time. Not sure if thats because of his injury but he has not regained the form he had before his injury.

Like Robertsons play, hustles, has a shot, good hands, makes crisp passes unlike so many of our big boys. I do not however understand why he kept falling down last night with nobody touching him, was weird.

Still liking Chuck and hope he can find his scoring touch to go along with his hard work.

The bad-

Keefe...all coaches have their faves and their ideas they just wont let go of but having Muzzin out in OT was a head scratcher. Holl or Dermott would have been much better suited to the open style. I would also try either of those guys on the pp, I think Dermott would flourish on the pp imo.

Marner reminds me of Gretzky at times and then he turns into Kovalev other times. He seems tohave a hard time just making the safe play. If the opportunity is there to be creative then great, but he doesn't seem to recognize when the play isnt there which is weird because he clearly has a high hockey iq.

Campbell made some good stops but unlike his winning streak he didnt make the stop when we needed him to. I like Jack and am rooting for him but I dont think we know quite yet what we have in him.

Passing- I am blown away that pros can be so brutal with passing the puck. Lazy, soft passes into the middle of the ice has me shaking my head in disbelief. Robertson has crisp passes and is about the only one who seems to.

The ugly-
Muzzin and Rielly have gone full Ed Jovanoski with their decision making. Hate both of their games of late.

the pp.....for the love of god show some urgency. I think it was the first pp we had rielly fakes out the forechecker at centre ice and the forecheck flys past him and he still passes it back to the trailing player. So predictible it hurts watching it. And once they set up it is visibly stagnant. At least the 2nd pp had some better looks, throwing it at the net and creating some chaos.

Shoot the damn puck. how many in the slot chances did we see just die from over thinking it?

And finally for me, I am definitely old school the way I was brought up to play the game but sticking up for each other is numero uno in my books win or lose and this teams lack of doing so kills me more than anything. I'm watching all the other top teams stick up for each other for the slightest infraction on one of their own and the leafs might glance at what happened then just skate away, and has been like this for a few yrs now. Im pretty sure it comes from the top not to retaliate and to hit em where it hurts on the scoreboard mentality but I personally don't think you can win like that. Playoffs are a war and if you can't count on the soldier next to you having your back....

We are in first at the moment and I do see improvements this year and I do see some acknowledgment that we lack something by bringing in foligno, bogo, simmonds but if I am honest with myself, I just don't think the leafs are there yet. As much as I want to believe we are up there with the best, this team still has a ways to go.

 

[Stephen]

The power play and goaltending issues aside, the one thing that has stood out to me as of late is that we have squandered too many scoring chances by being too cute and looking for the perfect passing play. That's not going to cut it in the playoffs.

We have to be able to play more of a North-South game and stick to the basics - put pucks on net, get some traffic in the crease, and score some ugly goals.

The Ottawa game (that we won) and the Vancouver game were frustrating because we gave away the puck a lot and we also coughed up 2-0 leads as well.

It just seems like even if you blame the goaltending, there isn’t enough of an attention to detail protecting the puck or they aren’t valuing the hard work they already put in to generate a lead. Yes, you might be able to flip switch and turn on all the offense against Anton Forsberg. But that doesn’t always work like vs Holtby if we want to buy the hot goalie thesis.

 

[Stephen]

Another factor that annoys me is Sheldon Keefe’s blender approach to all the lines. Yes, experiment. But maybe experiment with a small selective handful of changes instead of brand new lines up and down the line up instead of creating so much discontinuity especially at forward.

 

[Papi 4 Hart]

Wow we lost to a goalie who had a great performance. Play that game over 10 times we win 9. Let's get all the embarassment out of the way before playoffs. Fix our mistakes and move on.

 

[Wafflewhipper]

Ya, if that floats your boat.

Well it’s what floats the nhl standings. Very important concept to float around

 

[Sniper99]

No, they lost, maybe they deserved to win but they lost because Jack Campbell is a fantastic backup but Jack Campbell is not a #1

They lost also because they 5 idiots in front him cant light up Holtby who hasnt played in 3 WEEKS. 2 goals isnt going to get it done and whether or not that one chance crossed the line or not, cant rely on video replay.

 

[gtforepro]

Agreed, the result of that one game is no reason to panic.

That meter though, I did a quick search and can't find out how that number is calculated. I'm wondering if it factors in goaltending, I mean if your goalie craps out, that can outweigh a lot of good things the team does in front of him.

Do you deserve to win when your goalie plays like crap?

It's from that moneypuck dot com site. My basic understanding is it looks at each shot attempt and applies an expected goals value to it. I like it because I always seem to agree with it...like it makes sense...

 

[justloveleafs]

Slept on it, still pissed. This loss I should be over, much like how the 5-1 choke against Ottawa I was over by the next day. But the Hyman injury, our lack of response, and the response of some in the media is making this one all the worse. Can’t believe how many people in the media are saying “oh, Edler was on the ice for 3 minutes, he was tired” as if that f***ing excuses the rat f*** of intentionally sticking his knee out in an obvious dirty play.

And of course the Leafs can only barely make them pay on the 5 minute major and God Forbid they do anything physical to defend their teammate and honour so pfft.

Don't forget to mention you most likely, like a lot of us, have a huge hangover from listening to Beavis and Butthead cheering on their favourite team all night.

Toronto has had some of the greatest announcers in NHL history, but now we are left with these two guys, who would probably not even be able to keep a BINGO crowd amused, and we have Ron Mclean for the intermission.

Listen to Foster Hewitt call the Henderson goal. Listen to his son Bill Hewitt next, then Ward Cornell.

Bob Cole, Danny Gallivan, Doc Emrich.

Those guys were more exciting than the games. I feel I am at a funeral when I listen to Jim Hughson.

So yeah, last night was not fun at all. Surprised Hughson didn't start clapping when Hyman went down.

 

[RaFe]

I don't know...Terrible PP. Lost in OT. And after a blip in the season we're still:

28-12-5
1st in the division
5th? in the league

And...
Campbell's 11-2-1 with a 2.24//919 sv%.
Set an NHL record.
Matthews is the NHL's leading goal scorer.
He and Marner are tied for 4th in points overall.

But you'd never know it from the conversations lately. And it reminds me of any number of slumps some of our better teams and players played through. Today, Sundin is (rightly) a legend and almost always spoken of in glowing terms. But oh boy, did he go on a cooler one season lasting a lot longer than say, Jack Campbell's last couple of games.

Starting with Jack, I'll say something positive to the present contrary: He's going to be fine. He isn't going to be the victim of a few games in which he didn't continue a historically impossible pace. At some point, the "realism" that our fan base passes off as concern really has to give way to informed cautious observation. We create an untenable environment that the media feeds off and collectively we contribute in negative ways I'm not sure many other bases do.

Is it ever just ok for us to pause alarmist reactions during good seasons' slumps even if only as a once in a lifetime experiment to see if there's a different effect on the outcome? And funny enough, stats above likely don't matter because we've experienced a slump. They don't support the everlasting preferred narrative.

Maybe it's just a slump and maybe we're better than the slump. I think the stats convey that but I suspect all that matters is being able to vent in a way that demonstrates offense taken and thus "concern". If I can veer away from the crowd for the moment, I'm happy as a pig in shit with some of the stats and pretty excited about the possibilities with this group, native and newly acquired.

Perhaps Salutegate was one giant mirror few of us were able to look into.

Love this post!

 

[Gary Nylund]

It's from that moneypuck dot com site. My basic understanding is it looks at each shot attempt and applies an expected goals value to it. I like it because I always seem to agree with it...like it makes sense...

That's sort of what I thought, thanks. The problem with that is that it ignores goaltending so this "deserve to win" is a bit misleading IMO. Like "we deserved to win, we outplayed them so badly ... well, except for our goaltending".

That in a nutshell is why goaltending is the most important position in the playoffs. A mistake of two by the goalie can ruin the whole thing.

 

[tmlms13]

They're Going to put Hyman on LTIR until game 1 so Freddie can come back before the playoffs start.

 

[Gary Nylund]

Love this post!

On the other hand, it's the same shit we've been hearing some people say for years now about how good we are, and then we get taken out in the playoffs. Regular season numbers are nice I guess but I think most of us will judge this team by how they do in the playoffs.

He says Campbell will be fine but let's be honest, nobody knows what Campbell's gonna be. Maybe he'll be great in the playoffs or maybe he'll be absolutely terrible and everyone will be blaming him for losing in the playoffs the same way people blame Andersen for losing to CLB (which is pretty LOL,with a .936 SV%, how bad can he possibly have been).

Sign me up for a .936 SV% in the playoffs. I'll go out on a limb right now and say that if we get that kind of goaltending in the playoffs, we'll cruise through the first two rounds.

 

[Atomos2]

Wow we lost to a goalie who had a great performance. Play that game over 10 times we win 9. Let's get all the embarassment out of the way before playoffs. Fix our mistakes and move on.

Play that game 5 times and we have a flashback to last year’s play in round.

 

[PromisedLand]

Man, I'm tired of seeing how much we deserved to win after every loss.

Is there a "Get r Done" Meter?

Amen!

 

[PromisedLand]

They're Going to put Hyman on LTIR until game 1 so Freddie can come back before the playoffs start.

I dont mind that. I would also like to "rest" some folks like Bogo/Muzzin/Holl

Spezza/Jumbo/JT and hopefully Matthew/Marner/Nylander (towards the end for a few games)

and give some play time to Liljegren, continue with Robertson/Engvall (rotational basis)

Not sure what the rules are for this season regarding call ups? Are we still limited like the regular season? Do people coming in from taxi squad count as call ups?

Too much info I just dont know about lol

 

[Captain Crunch]

The good -
4th line played much better than I expected, thought Thornton had his best game in a long time. I am disappointed overall with Simmonds though, he is willing to go to the front of the net but his passing is pee wee house league level and he has taken on this new turn his back to the player he is hitting.... every time. Not sure if thats because of his injury but he has not regained the form he had before his injury.

Like Robertsons play, hustles, has a shot, good hands, makes crisp passes unlike so many of our big boys. I do not however understand why he kept falling down last night with nobody touching him, was weird.

Still liking Chuck and hope he can find his scoring touch to go along with his hard work.

The bad-

Keefe...all coaches have their faves and their ideas they just wont let go of but having Muzzin out in OT was a head scratcher. Holl or Dermott would have been much better suited to the open style. I would also try either of those guys on the pp, I think Dermott would flourish on the pp imo.

Marner reminds me of Gretzky at times and then he turns into Kovalev other times. He seems tohave a hard time just making the safe play. If the opportunity is there to be creative then great, but he doesn't seem to recognize when the play isnt there which is weird because he clearly has a high hockey iq.

Campbell made some good stops but unlike his winning streak he didnt make the stop when we needed him to. I like Jack and am rooting for him but I dont think we know quite yet what we have in him.

Passing- I am blown away that pros can be so brutal with passing the puck. Lazy, soft passes into the middle of the ice has me shaking my head in disbelief. Robertson has crisp passes and is about the only one who seems to.

The ugly-
Muzzin and Rielly have gone full Ed Jovanoski with their decision making. Hate both of their games of late.

the pp.....for the love of god show some urgency. I think it was the first pp we had rielly fakes out the forechecker at centre ice and the forecheck flys past him and he still passes it back to the trailing player. So predictible it hurts watching it. And once they set up it is visibly stagnant. At least the 2nd pp had some better looks, throwing it at the net and creating some chaos.

Shoot the damn puck. how many in the slot chances did we see just die from over thinking it?

And finally for me, I am definitely old school the way I was brought up to play the game but sticking up for each other is numero uno in my books win or lose and this teams lack of doing so kills me more than anything. I'm watching all the other top teams stick up for each other for the slightest infraction on one of their own and the leafs might glance at what happened then just skate away, and has been like this for a few yrs now. Im pretty sure it comes from the top not to retaliate and to hit em where it hurts on the scoreboard mentality but I personally don't think you can win like that. Playoffs are a war and if you can't count on the soldier next to you having your back....

We are in first at the moment and I do see improvements this year and I do see some acknowledgment that we lack something by bringing in foligno, bogo, simmonds but if I am honest with myself, I just don't think the leafs are there yet. As much as I want to believe we are up there with the best, this team still has a ways to go.

You nailed it! Excellent post!

 

[ITM]

On the other hand, it's the same shit we've been hearing some people say for years now about how good we are, and then we get taken out in the playoffs. Regular season numbers are nice I guess but I think most of us will judge this team by how they do in the playoffs.

He says Campbell will be fine but let's be honest, nobody knows what Campbell's gonna be. Maybe he'll be great in the playoffs or maybe he'll be absolutely terrible and everyone will be blaming him for losing in the playoffs the same way people blame Andersen for losing to CLB (which is pretty LOL,with a .936 SV%, how bad can he possibly have been).

Sign me up for a .936 SV% in the playoffs. I'll go out on a limb right now and say that if we get that kind of goaltending in the playoffs, we'll cruise through the first two rounds.

I am being honest when I say Campbell will be fine. Sure there's an element of hope and optimism. Why wouldn't there be? There's cause for it. What there isn't cause for is an alarmist reaction that compares this team with past versions that gave reason for the alarm bells.

My slant does not represent "the same shit" if by same shit we mean optimism advised by reason. The "same shit" crowd, the majority in our fan base, the Chicken Little brigade, ignore reason in order to carry on the notion that there's never any cause for hope in Toronto. And I say that as a life long Leafs fan who happened to have a rink side seat to Detroit's emergence as it's era's best franchise during the Bowman years. Why does that matter? Because that franchise tilted it's all-world talent through some very tough personnel decisions in order to get the right pieces to augment it's core. A record setting-regular season gave way to a regular season of concern, that was followed by a Cup. Sometimes the obvious isn't immediately apprehended. This to say, I'm not saying I'm optimistic absent an understanding of what playoff hockey teams look like and play like, I'm saying we have reasons not to act like our club isn't giving cause for optimism in the face of a few bumps as we navigate a very difficult course. And a lot longer than some might believe is reasonable.

There's a few reasons I've got Shanahan as my avatar and "As Long As It Takes" as a slogan. I'm ENTIRELY aware of the kind of cost we might be in for. I'm just not comfortable parroting the same old cliched jaded Leafs fan bitch and moan when there's objective reason and historical imperative not to.