Morning-after recap: A spooky loss

Usually, a night where Auston Matthews and Nazem Kadri score means everyone else is flying. If you can’t key in on the Leafs’ top two centres, `what can you do? Unfortunately, the Sharks did a lot. Or, should we put it another way?

The Leafs didn’t do much.

Despite only losing by one goal, it’s not hard to say that this was the clear worst game of the season for the Buds. There were actually some pretty solid individual performances, but the negatives (especially coming from the fourth line, who might as well have not shown up to the rink last night) heavily outweighed any positives.

You might have seen this floating around, but neither Dominic Moore or Matt Martin were on the ice for a single shot attempt by the Leafs at even strength. Not one.

Oddly enough, the Leafs had a decent enough chance to win this game, but the team numbers are a little misleading. (Sorry, analytics. We don’t mean to doubt you, but we’re gonna do it anyway.)

At even strength, the Sharks had 55 shot attempts to the Leafs 54. Close, right?

Well uh… they couldn’t really put anything on net. They managed just two shots on net in the second period (one at even strength). Couple with single-digit shot totals (9 in the first, 7 in the third) in the other two periods, 18 shots won’t win you a lot of hockey games.

Here’s the goals:

Early into this game, it seemed like maybe it was worth today’s sleep deprivation. After all, Auston can do no wrong, right?

William Nylander starts the play by just circling around the neutral zone like he does now, passes the puck back to Nikita Zaitsev, it gets fired in towards Martin Jones, and hey, there’s Matthews to scoop it up and fire it home!

When he’s open, the kid is dangerous.

When he’s covered, the kid usually does something like this:

He’s really getting quite close to the “one of the clear best hockey players on the planet” model.

After a start to the second period where the Leafs began to really fall apart, Joe Pavelski found a hole and tipped this one in. Morgan Rielly is a foot away from him instead of six inches, the puck slides into the net and we have a 1-1 hockey game. In the words of every ref, that’s a good goal.

You know that fairy tale about the person with the battering ram who kept hitting the wall until it finally broke down? Well it doesn’t exist, but the idea of it does. Keep hitting something over and over, and you’ll eventually break through, most of the time.

The Sharks came at the Leafs over and over and over and over again, and there wasn’t a lot of fight back. From the top of the right faceoff circle, Tim Heed fired a laser and on what was a very good night for Andersen, he got beat. Hard to blame him for giving up a third-period power play goal when the shot was wide open. The Leafs PK wasn’t perfect, and it cost them.

The Sharks scored an empty netter, and usually, that means the game is over. But every so often, you get one of these funny games where it ends up being the game winner.

We’re not going to do an intense breakdown of how Ward scored this goal, because at the end of the day all empty-net goals are the result of “one team didn’t have a goalie”.

After Joel Ward’s goal, the Leafs kept pressing, which was good to see. However, it was a classic case of “too little too late.”

There’s not much to evaluate here: This was not Borgman’s first as a Leaf, because nothing is good in the world. Nazem Kadri did however get a tip on it, which brings his goal total to seven on the season. What’s he going to end up with?

30? 40? 90?

And about a minute later, the game was over. The Leafs lost for the third time in a row. It hurt a little bit.

See you tomorrow night.