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The Toronto Maple Leafs with home-ice advantage to play for the next three weeks have continued to display the concerning trait of a lack of attention to detail. It was on display last week when the club blew a third-period lead in a loss to Buffalo (a team that has done nothing but lose since the trade deadline), and showed itself on Saturday in blowing a two-goal lead in the final 10 minutes of regulation in Ottawa.
On Tuesday, the Maple Leafs took an early lead but were stymied by Ilya Sorokin and could not match the work ethic and energy of a New York Islanders squad hanging on to a wild card spot and without one of their best scorers in Mathew Barzal. Even after losing top scorer Brock Nelson in the first period, the offensively challenged Isles tied a season-high output in a 7-2 win at UBS Arena on Tuesday, taking advantage of numerous Toronto giveaways and a subpar performance between the pipes by Ilya Samsonov.
Sam Lafferty and Mitch Marner scored for the Leafs, who only trailed by a goal early in the third in spite of being outplayed and allowing three second-period goals, but Cal Clutterbuck’s quick response 44 seconds after Marner’s tally sealed Toronto’s fate.
“We didn’t generate enough. We had some really good looks that their goalie made good saves on, but consistently, we didn’t challenge enough to the inside. If you are playing against this team, if you don’t do that, you are going to have a night like this.” Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said after the game. We make another mistake (on the Clutterbuck goal), and from then on, it was tough sledding for us in terms of the engagement in the game. I thought we were pretty dejected after that one. That was disappointing and unfortunate.”
The game was marred by bad defensive giveaways, including an inopportune turnover by Timothy Liljegren on Hudson Fasching’s go-ahead goal, and Morgan Rielly on Clutterbuck’s dagger. Rielly and defense partner Erik Gustafsson were a combined -5 on the night, which is somewhat a product of the Leafs mixing up and load managing their blueline down the stretch, but also an indicator that Gustafsson (acquired from Washington as a backup for Rielly as a power-play quarterback) cannot be played major minutes in the post-season because of his defensive shortcomings.
If the remaining dozen games are to serve as a tryout for playoff playing time, veterans Rielly, TJ Brodie, Jake McCabe, and Mark Giordano appear to be shoo-ins, with Gustafsson, Liljegren, Justin Holl, and Luke Schenn battling over two spots. Based on the fact that Schenn’s acquisition was directly correlated to Tampa Bay’s physicality, it would make sense that he would be in the Leafs lineup for Game 1, making the battle for the last spot between Gustafsson, Liljegren and Holl.
At practice on Wednesday, Keefe had Gustafsson and Liljegren as the extra pairing and re-inserted Brodie and Schenn. We will likely see this until perhaps the final week or so of the season, when it is likely the Leafs will go with their starting six.
Toronto starts their stretch of three games in four nights on the road in Sunrise against the Florida Panthers on Thursday.
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