TORONTO – In the worst loss of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ youth-oriented voyage, things got ugly early — and then they got worse.
The Los Angeles Kings only come to Toronto one night a year, so it’s no surprise their head coach remembers vividly his club’s 5-0 loss on Air Canada Centre ice last December.
“I had a nightmare of the game in here,” Darryl Sutter deadpanned after Tuesday’s morning skate. The reporters chuckled. The coach did not.
A few hours later, Sutter’s charges — bigger, wiser, hungrier, a league better — stepped out and dismantled an under-prepared and overmatched home squad that had been feeling pretty good about themselves, what with their three-game winning streak, their league-high shots per game rate, and their suspension-free flexing all over the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday night.
Playing like a possession team possessed, the Kings outshot Toronto 43-19 and outscored the Leafs 7-0, chasing Frederik Andersen and sending most fans home early to check on the polls in the process.
Even those numbers don’t do the thrashing justice. The Kings won what felt like every loose battle, owned the neutral zone, and limited the Leafs’ attack to the type of weak, perimeter-shots-only style that makes the Kings’ backup goalies look talented enough to acquire. Somehow, they matched the Leafs in body checks even though they always had the puck.
“We joke around, watching the Eastern Conference games before ours, and it’s a track meet,” said Jeff Carter after his two-goal night. “We did nothing new tonight that we don’t normally do.”
Third-string netminder Peter Budaj recorded back-to-back shutouts for the first time in his career. Anze Kopitar ended a five-game scoring drought. All but two of the Kings’ 18 men registered shots, and 10 different L.A. players had a minimum of three shots on goal.
When they weren’t shooting it, they were holding the puck like a grudge. A lopsided victory for the big-boy cycle game over the run-and-gun kids.
Dustin Brown, relieved of his captaincy but rediscovering his jump, scored the winner 13 minutes and 56 seconds in.
“That’s a good, old-fashioned Western Conference beatdown right there,” Kings forward Devin Setoguchi said, to no one in particular, as the visitors walked businesslike off the ice.
Bon Jovi went unsung.
“You’re not just going to get up tomorrow and everything’s rosy. We embarrassed ourselves here today,” said Leafs coach Mike Babcock. “As optimistic as everything appears one day, and you’ve won three in a row and you get your lunch fed to ya, and we’re not competitive and not organized and not prepared.”
Even on two days’ rest, the Leafs exhibited none of the pushback they flashed last week. Babcock reached for his blender, his lines becoming harder to predict than Florida. Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews got together, William Nylander ended the night on the fourth line, but nothing mattered.
“We were trying to be too fancy [and] they were feasting on our turnovers and taking it to us,” said Tyler Bozak. “They’re right on top of you. They cut you off…. They wear you out throughout the game.”
Fans, too. When in-game announcer Mike Ross announced one-minute remained in regulation with the score 6-zip bad guys, the crowd mock-cheered. Fourteen seconds later, Dwight King converted the extra point. Another faux celebration ensued.
“It was a humbling experience for our players and myself here in our building,” Babcock said. “We’ve got a lot of real good fans that come here to support us and don’t want to watch us play like that.”
Prior to The Humbling, the Kings warmed up in the bowels of the ACC by kicking around a soccer ball and listening, appropriately enough, to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication” on a portable speaker.
Sample lyric: Destruction leads to a very rough road / But it also breeds creation.
“We’re a group that wants to get to that level,” Morgan Rielly said of the Kings, the NHL’s stingiest possession team five years running.
“We want to be one of the best teams going in this league, and they showed us tonight we have a long way to go.”
