TORONTO — There was an unusual amount of urgency in Randy Carlyle’s voice.
This was about eight hours before the Toronto Maple Leafs would get snowed in with a 7-4 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers.
“We’ve been erratic, simple as that,” Carlyle said Saturday morning. “How can we describe it any other way?”
There seems to be very little in between with this fickle bunch. When it goes well it can go really well, as their recent 10-1-1 run illustrated.
When it goes the other way? Well, you get lopsided losses to the 30th-place Hurricanes and 25th-place Flyers.
The challenge right now is to keep from falling into a pit of despair.
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Losing streaks are going to happen over the course of a season and what the Leafs need to avoid most is an extended one. They’ve put a lot of points in the bank recently, but appear poised to give some back with a visit to Chicago on Sunday to kick off a seven-game road trip.
That’s why Carlyle so badly wanted the Leafs to curb their loose play with the Flyers in town. His is a team that has shown itself prone to long funks in recent seasons, and the current run of defensive indifference stretches back 11 games — a period where it has gone 8-3-0 despite giving up an average of 37 shots against.
“It makes us rely on our goaltenders too much,” said captain Dion Phaneuf.
Even after building an early 2-0 lead, the Leafs couldn’t find much defensive structure on Saturday. They committed turnovers and struggled to move the puck out of their zone. They ultimately beat themselves, according to veteran defenceman Stephane Robidas.
First it was the Philadelphia line centred by Sean Couturier that posed the most danger. They scored twice at even strength during a three-minute span in the first period while matched up against the Tyler Bozak-Phil Kessel-Joffrey Lupul trio.
Then Jakub Voracek and Claude Giroux took over.
Nazem Kadri drew that difficult assignment for the Leafs and saw a rotating cast of wingers beside him as Carlyle struggled to find the right mix. They came up with no answer for two of the NHL’s top scorers, getting “schooled” during a momentum-swinging second period.
Philadelphia led 5-3 after 40 minutes and held a 34-16 edge in shots. The only chance Toronto had of winning a game like this one was if it received a heroic effort from goalie Jonathan Bernier.
Instead, he was merely human.
“We left Bernie out to dry tonight,” said Leafs centre Peter Holland.
“We’re not far removed from playing some really good hockey,” he added. “We dropped two games in a row and it’s going to happen over the course of a season, but we seem to do it in fashion.”
What was most disconcerting was their inability to generate any extended control in the offensive zone. The Flyers are a suspect team defensively and could have been turned inside-out by the usually dangerous Leafs attack.
There was good reason for Carlyle to want his group to really buckle down here. This was a very winnable game that they failed to win.
“We just seemed to get sloppy with the management of the puck,” he said. “We allowed them to come back into the game and take control of the game. We didn’t do a very good job from the 10-minute point of the first period.”
When the game gets away from the Leafs it really gets away.
Typically they’ve been able to play well with a lead — this was the first time they lost after scoring first all season — but they rarely find the necessary push from behind. Toronto has now seen 18 of its 32 games decided by three or more goals, and five of those efforts have been losses at Air Canada Centre.
Now they head on the road with very few positives from recent outings to build on.
“We’ve just got to pay attention to the details of our game,” said Robidas. “It’s the little things that make a big difference in the end. It’s not like we’ve got to change the whole way we play. We know how to play.
“We know we can play the right way. We’ve done it.”
The sooner they do it again, the better.
