The Maple Leafs had a very unfortunate loss last night in Buffalo. Playing a team that they should beat is always a dangerous game with Toronto, especially when that opponent is Buffalo. Take a look at last night’s post-game report for all the gifs of the goals.

The game went awry from the very get-go, as the Sabres went up 2-0 within the first 5 minutes of the game. Here are the two goals:

Sam Reinhart scores to put the Sabres up 1-0 on the powerplay pic.twitter.com/2ItnYz92GV

Jason Pominville scores to put the Sabres up 2-0 pic.twitter.com/rIyoeysIN8

From there the Leafs took over the game and were largely the better team throughout. Here’s how the shot chart shaped up:

This chart is adjusted to make shots while you’re leading count for more than shots while you’re trailing, because of the desperation that generally comes with trailing, and apathy that generally comes with leading.

The Leafs were able to claw back with two goals from Leo Komarov (!!) to bring the game to 2-2. Here they are:

 

Unfortunately, the Sabres ran ahead with the game on 3 goals that, the Leafs will undoubtedly be unhappy with.

 

The Leafs earned one back late to make it 5-3, but ultimately the effort was moot.

The title mentions “luck”, and it should be apparent that the Sabres were very lucky on a few of their goals. The “catching up” part, however, is not as apparent. Even after last night’s game, the Leafs sit 2nd in the league with a 101.70 PDO (sum of team shooting% and save%). Generally, if you’re higher than 100 in PDO, you’re getting “lucky”, because you’re scoring on a higher percentage of your shots for, or saving a higher percentage of your shots against, than would normally be expected. It seems that last night the universe worked on correcting this for the Leafs.

The Leafs had a pretty good game, as evidenced by the shot chart above and the heat map below:

Ultimately it was factors out of their control that decided this game. Chad Johnson played an excellent game for the Sabres, and things just didn’t go their way in the bounces.

With 3 more (not 4 more, Rasmus) games against the Sabres, hopefully the Leafs will correct this tendency of losing to bad Sabres teams late in the season.