Morning after recap: Not quite, comeback kids

If nothing else, the Leafs invoked a little sense of “believe” last night. It’s not often you give up the first three goals of a hockey game and still feel like you played well, but the general sentiment last night was that the Leafs put up a decent effort despite the final scoreline.

It still leaves the sour taste in your mouth, but on the second-half of a back-to-back with a goaltending matchup of McElhinney/Holtby? Well, let’s just say it could have been a lot worse.

Let’s walk you through the goals.

A few people on the Twitter timeline described this goal as being reminiscent of the 1980s, and I’d have to say I agree. The Leafs defenders just passively allow Ovechkin into the zone, he makes one move here, one move there, and his shot just kind of… goes past a stationary Curtis McElhinney. Kudos to Ovi, but uh…. uh…. not the Leafs’ best efforts all around there.

If you give Alex Ovechkin open space, he’ll probably make you pay. An odd bouncing puck right off an offensive zone faceoff leaves him uncovered, and Ovechkin just tees it up for the 2-0 goal.

This is a wholly different Washington team than the squad the Leafs saw in April. Jakub Vrana, who played just 21 games last year at the NHL level (and none in the playoffs) is now an NHL regular, having suited up 24 times this year for the big club. With 7 goals, he’s showing with moves like this one why he has reason to stay. Blowing right past Nikita Zaitsev at the blueline, Vrana zooms down the ice and well, shoots his shot.

Though most of the Leafs fanbase would agree Jake Gardiner has not necessarily been at his best this year, there are still moments like these that makes you appreciate him for when he does exist in the blue and white.

The Leafs’ first of the night, courtesy of this rocket.

Forwards? What are those?

Beaten earlier in the game with someone else’s speed, Nikita Zaitsev rolls around to the outside here and just pings it in off Braden Holtby.

If this was soccer, they’d call that a cheeky goal.

Ah, well. You win some, you lose some. Ovechkin nets his third, and the Leafs lose.

The Leafs head out to Calgary to play them Tuesday night. See you then. Puck drop is set for 9 pm.