Of the two losses the Toronto Maple Leafs suffered to Central Division opponents this weekend, Sunday’s was less worth getting frustrated over. While there were positives and negatives to take away from both games, the Maple Leafs overall had a cleaner effort against the Minnesota Wild on Sunday. The problem is that the game came within 24 hours of their 4-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues on Saturday, meaning that toward the end of it, their legs started to fail them and it showed. With a quiet effort offensively on both sides and a power play funk that was finally snapped after weeks of beating that dead horse, there’s not much to talk about from an analysis standpoint — but we’re going to try anyway!
Maple Leafs’ fatigue catches up to them in OT
Put it this way — if the Maple Leafs had won in convincing fashion on Saturday night, not too many people would have been upset with the result of the game against Minnesota, but since the point they salvaged in overtime ended up being the only point they took away from the back-to-back, the loss will feel like a little more of a punch to the gut. The Maple Leafs managed to escape a couple of fire drill scenarios including a four-minute penalty to Oliver Ekman-Larsson for a cross-check and ensuing roughing minor, as well as some highlight reel saves from Anthony Stolarz, sometimes with a stick and sometimes without.
Anthony Stolarz is the 1A pic.twitter.com/WA0LxiqYV3
— Omar (@TicTacTOmar) November 4, 2024
Nonetheless, the Maple Leafs made it to overtime and exchanged cycles back and forth with Minnesota before getting caught cheating for offence on the overtime winner. After Domi managed to deflect the puck out of his own zone and behind the Wild defender, he made a strong effort to win the footrace and get a breakaway out of it, but Minnesota’s Jared Spurgeon got to it first and wired it back up the ice to Marco Rossi, who tapped it over to Matthew Boldy for the breakaway and subsequent winner.
live view of the goal pic.twitter.com/jmMScbWMoO
— Omar (@TicTacTOmar) November 4, 2024
Oliver Ekman-Larsson didn’t choose a great time to change, and Max Pacioretty seemed to be skating in no man’s land, but that’s all that should be drawn from the goal. The Wild are 8-1-2 on the season to start the year and the Maple Leafs losing a game to them in the fashion that they did isn’t something that should start discourse of any sort, but again, a lot of those concerns would be rendered irrelevant had they put together a better effort in St. Louis on Saturday.
With that being said, here are some additional quick hits from Sunday’s game.
- Yes, you heard it here first. The Maple Leafs’ power play drought officially snapped with their lone goal coming on the power play courtesy of William Nylander. The goal snapped an 0-for-20 stretch to begin on the road and marked their first power play goal since October 21 on Prime. They seemed to take Craig Berube’s comments following Saturday night’s loss to heart, taking four shots on their first power play, and it paid off for them on the next one. Regardless of Sunday’s result, they need to continue to emphasize that shot-first mentality and do what they can to stay away from the perimeter. The easiest way to shut down their power play is to prevent them from breaking into the zone cleanly and keep them to the outside. In the end, it will always come down to getting shots on net and creating those opportunities at the front of the net, and unless they can get their power play back into a groove, they’re going to keep losing tight games like Saturday’s against St. Louis
- I alluded to this in the takeaways following the game in St. Louis, but it may be time for the Maple Leafs to shake up their forward lines again. The top line of Matthew Knies, Auston Matthews, and Mitch Marner likely won’t be seeing a shakeup, and while the Pacioretty-Tavares-Nylander line caught fire for a couple of games, they were silenced this weekend. The benefit to that new second line getting on the scoresheet was that it was able to distract from the black hole that the third line of Bobby McMann, Max Domi, and either Pontus Holmberg or Nick Robertson has become. If it were up to me, I would reunite Nylander with Domi and McMann and keep that Tavares/Pacioretty connection together, but Berube may have other ideas.
- If there’s one positive to take away from the first month of the season, it’s that the penalty kill seems to have drastically improved. The Maple Leafs killed off a four-minute power play at the end of the second period and kept Minnesota off of the scoresheet on the man advantage, giving them an 84.3% penalty kill conversion rate for ninth-best in the league. Their new system under penalty kill coach Lane Lambert seems to be working nicely, and it’s probably saved them a couple of games that could have otherwise been losses due to the power play woes. Hopefully, this is a case where they can get the power play going again and maintain that momentum on the penalty kill. It would make winning hockey games much easier.
The Maple Leafs are in action on Tuesday night as they get to host the Boston Bruins at the beginning of four straight games against Atlantic Division teams. Now would be a great time for the annual November heater.
