Leafs Postgame: Isles Exact Revenge

Whatever mojo Jonathan Bernier had going a couple days ago when he stumped New York Islanders shooters in a 2-1 victory… Well, he lost it. 

The Isles came right back at the Leafs tonight with the fury of 20 or so mildly angry dudes, putting just a handful of pucks on net and still coming out the other side with a lopsided 6-3 victory. Here’s the rundown…

Do you really want to relive this game? Ugh, fine…

Nazem Kadri won the opening faceoff against John Tavares and it was pretty much downhill from there. Brock Nelson would open the scoring just two minutes into the game (Classic Bernier!), though Brad Boyes would answer just 39 seconds later. Half of you were probably grabbing something from the fridge and it was already 1-1 by the time you actually sat down.

Despite outshooting the Islanders in the first period 12-7, Toronto would head to the first intermission down by a score of 3-1 following goals from John Tavares and Frans Neilsen. 

In the second period, the Leafs again outshot the Islanders, this time 13-8. And again, the Leafs would only score one goal. And again, the Islanders would score three. Nik Kulemin, Matt Martin and Anders Lee would all find the back of the net to put New York up 6-2, with P.A. Parenteau picking up the Toronto marker.

The third period wouldn’t really be worth watching. James Reimer replaced Jonathan Bernier and stopped six-of-six shots (thank goodness he’s back in net tomorrow), and Shawn Matthias would pick up a meaningless goal with just a few minutes to spare before the Islanders would leave the ice with a 6-3 victory.

The all-situations chart above from war-on-ice shows us pretty clearly that Toronto carried the play throughout the entire game. So how do you explain the loss? Allowing six goals on just 15 shots sure seems to sum things up nicely. 

This defeat lands on Bernier’s shoulders. Sure, the Leafs did little to help their goaltender at times, but you can’t sugarcoat that many goals on that few shots. Goaltending failed Toronto tonight.

Tonight we’re giving it to Brad Boyes, who not only picked up the first Toronto goal, but also assisted on Shawn Matthias’s third period marker. The Leafs’ fourth line of Matthias-Froese-Boyes was very good tonight, with Boyes alone picking up an 88% Corsi For rating. The eyeballs and numbers agreed on Boyes tonight – he was solid.

The Leafs will hop on a quick flight to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for tomorrow night’s matchup against the Penguins and old friend Phil Kessel. Tune in to Sportsnet at 7:00pm.