After two frustrating losses to the Columbus Blue Jackets and St. Louis Blues, the Toronto Maple Leafs let it known they are not pleased with their performances and critical of their mistakes.
Following Thursday’s 5-1 loss, captain Auston Matthews was asked by reporters what went wrong against the Blues and held himself accountable for their performance.
“Light on pucks, losing battles, opened up the net front tonight. It’s pretty simple,” he said. “Just a bad game all around. It starts with me. But yeah, there’s a number of things we obviously didn’t do good tonight.”
Matthews later added that he felt the mindset of the team was not where it needed to be in this one which he felt is not acceptable since they are a veteran team that should have given a better response to their abysmal performance on Tuesday.
It is surely refreshing to hear the Leafs players properly holding themselves accountable for their mistakes more consistently since Craig Berube took over as coach.
Matthews was not the only one placing the blame on himself first for their recent struggles. William Nylander held himself in check for the overall team play as well as his critical error that resulted in the 4-1 goal from Jake Neighbours, where he felt he needed better situational awareness on the play.
“My play was stupid there in the third period. Gotta be better than that. I think we were able to create a lot of chances, we played them pretty good enough but we gave them too many good quality scoring chances,” he said. “I mean, we’ve sure taken a dip. That’s on me and everybody else on the team to pick it up a notch starting with practice tomorrow.”
After starting the season holding the opposition to two goals or less with a goalie in the net through the first six games, the Leafs have allowed 10 goals to get past their netminder, which has resulted in a dramatic cut to their goal differential. It erases all of the goodwill generated from their impressive showing on Monday against the Tampa Bay Lightning, which was arguably their most complete regular season performance of the Matthews Era so far.
“I think we just got to get back to defending hard. Obviously we have allowed 10 or 11 goals in two games. I don’t think that’s going to cut it,” defenceman Oliver Ekman-Larsson said on what has gone wrong since the Lightning game. “It’s not good enough. Obviously coming off pretty flat in two games in a row, so I think that’s gotta be better. That’s on us to prepare better, make sure we’re ready to go when the ref drops the puck.”
Another area of concern is the Leafs’ lacklustre powerplay which has operated at just over a 10% success rate dating back to the end of February. Given all of the firepower that Toronto is blessed with, having a man-advantage unit coming up empty so often is not going to cut it for a team with championship aspirations.
Matthews was very candid in assessing why he feels the power-play unit is struggling so much to begin the season.
“I thought tonight was a little bit better. And then we get down to crunch time and just not getting up there and not generating enough. Just not on the same page,” he said. “That’s, kind of been the story throughout the first eight games here. It’s, hard to dominate and gain momentum when that’s off, right? It’s such an important part of the game, both sides of it. And it’s just an area that we need to bear down, dig in, and be better in.”
Of course, identifying what is wrong is one thing and fixing it is another. The Leafs are doing the right thing in taking responsibility for their mistakes instead of preaching they are learning lessons. But it will be up to them to get out of the hole they have dug themselves in or else they risk letting the snowball get bigger when they face the Boston Bruins on Saturday.
