If you’re not a baseball fan and you were looking forward to watching this game all day, I’m sorry.

The Toronto Maple Leafs fell in a contender for the ugliest loss of the season with a 6-3 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on the second half of a back-to-back Wednesday night. The shot clock will tell you otherwise, but the Maple Leafs didn’t get a ton of high danger chances outside of a flurry of offensive zone possession in the second period. In the end, the loss falls on the shoulders of two factors – Cayden Primeau and the continued inability to defend off the rush.

It’s unfair to pin all of the blame on a guy who was claimed off waivers and will likely be headed back in that direction once Joseph Woll is cleared to play, but six goals on 24 shots is beyond not good enough at the NHL level. Although Primeau let in seven goals combined in his other two starts this season, he was able to take advantage of solid team performances in front of him and supply them with the saves they needed to win those games. Tonight’s game, on the other hand, was an example of what happens when you leave an AHL-calibre goaltender to deal with the amount of odd-man rushes the Leafs allowed.

On nearly each goal in this game, the Leafs were either caught off guard by a burst of speed or gave the puck away to a Blue Jackets team that took the puck straight to the net every time. The fifth one can be granted a pass, considering that Steven Lorentz was hurt in the offensive zone and play resumed without a whistle, resulting in the Leafs playing shorthanded. Outside of that, they looked like a team suffering without Chris Tanev and trying to work through the same issue they’ve had all month.

There were a couple of bright spots to take away from the game, despite what I might have made you believe in those 200 or so words. Sammy Blais scored in his Leafs debut for his first goal in the NHL since December 2023, and John Tavares scored his 500th career goal, becoming the 49th player in NHL history to do so. See? We can celebrate some things!

The Leafs will travel to Philadelphia to face the Flyers on Saturday night, and if the World Series goes seven games, it will be one last game without the entirety of the GTA focused on the hockey team. Hopefully they’ll be able to pull it together after that.