Maple Leafs' special teams troubles fuel mid-game collapse, Avalanche comeback

TORONTO — For Sheldon Keefe, the formula was simple.

For his Toronto Maple Leafs to take down the team in front of them — this Colorado Avalanche group that sits just a year removed from Stanley Cup glory, that boasts two of the best players in the world, among a slew of other elite ones — there were two tests his squad had to master.

“If you’re going to win this game, and compete against that team — especially when they’re shorthanded like they are, with the injuries and such that they have — you’ve got to be even or better on special teams. And you’ve got to be even or better against their best players,” the coach said from the bowels of Scotiabank Arena on Saturday night. “If you let their power play give them an advantage, and if their best players outplay ours, you’re in tough. You’re not going to beat that team. 

“We didn’t win the special teams. And you saw what their best people did tonight.”

The stark assessment betrays the methodical collapse his club authored Saturday, as they turned a 3-0 first-period lead into an eventual 5-3 loss by the night’s end. Asked where the unravelling began in this one, the coach pointed to the opening minutes of the second period.

“It starts with the first goal. We stopped playing,” he said, pointing to Jonathan Drouin’s tally early in the middle frame, which cut Toronto’s lead to two. “We stopped playing, gave them a freebie. The first period, we had one line going. The first period, the score was not indicative of what the period was like. They were in our zone twice as much as we were in theirs. We were defending too much. Their best people were carrying play, dominating play.” 

It wasn’t just that the home side got outplayed though, that the Avalanche woke up and allowed their all-world skill to take over. It was that the Maple Leafs gave up the game just as much as the Avs grabbed it back.

“We had to get better in the second period. And we didn’t. And not only did we not — we gave them life by taking penalties,” Keefe continued. “You just can’t do these things. It was similar the other night, the way the penalty kill hurt us. It can’t happen.”

Pick through the wreckage of that messy second period, and it becomes clearer how it all came apart.

It started five minutes into the frame, when a chaotic sequence behind Toronto’s net wound up with Mark Giordano in the box, called for hauling down an Avalanche attacker to prevent a tap-in into a near-empty net. Seconds into the man-advantage, there was Drouin, one-timing it in from the slot, chipping away at Toronto’s pile. Before he did, though, there was David Kampf, taking a high-sticking penalty, giving Colorado another power play immediately after connecting on their first.

The Leafs managed to hold Colorado off the board on that second attempt. Still, by that point, the visitors were feeding off the opportunity to whip pucks around Toronto’s zone, to launch chance after chance at Martin Jones.

Soon after, the Maple Leafs were granted a power play of their own, a chance to swing things back in their direction, to reclaim their three-goal lead. Instead, they stumbled through the two-minute advantage, managing little in the way of a real chance, somehow giving Colorado even more life, this time via their penalty kill.

A few minutes after that missed opportunity, after 13 minutes of the ice tilting heftily in in their direction, Colorado struck again, a terrible giveaway by Auston Matthews gifting the visitors their second of the night.

Cut to the third period, after an intermission to reset, to rediscover the form they’d showed early. 

Five minutes in, they were back to a familiar scene — a Leaf in the box, and the Avs’ top unit toying with the Toronto with some offensive-zone wizardry.

The Maple Leafs held them off. Still, again, the advantage granted Colorado too many chances to find their rhythm, their touch, their belief. Not long after that momentum-building power play, the seemingly inevitable tying goal came, Andrew Cogliano picking the puck up in the slot and wiring it home.

With the dust settled on the eventual loss, it’s easy to chalk it up to Colorado’s Cup savvy, their understanding of what it takes to win. It’s easy to assume the recent champs probably believed all along that they could wrestle this one back from the blue and white, despite digging that three-goal hole.

“No. Not at all,” said Nathan MacKinnon from the visitors’ locker room post-game, when asked point blank about that belief. “Being down 3-0, it’s not fun. But we stayed we resilient. Obviously, they didn’t play their best, I didn’t think, in the last two periods. And we managed to come back.”

It was No. 29 himself who came up with the dagger, late in the third, to put this one away.

If there was one moment on this night of these Maple Leafs being purely outclassed, of simply having no answer, it was this one. After an evening of ill-timed passes, risky giveaways, and disconnected attacks from the home side, the Avalanche schooled them on the winning play of the tilt. 

First came Drouin, flying into the zone down the right wing, dropping it to Mikko Rantanen just past the blue line, and charging forward to tie up opposing sticks. Then Rantanen, waiting a beat, floating a perfect pass over to MacKinnon, who’d darted down the left wing to the top of the circle. And then it was simply No. 29 doing what he does — stopping up, shuffling the puck to buy time, showing that patience amid chaos that only the game’s best have, until Jake McCabe had spun out wildly to the corner and Jones had started doubting what was coming next. 

Shot, goal, game-winner.

Of course, as was the case all night, rewind a few minutes earlier and you once again find the Maple Leafs in the penalty box, gifting the Avs a chance to hone their timing, to find their moment, to build the confidence to pull off such a comeback-clinching maneuver.

“Obviously, we gave that team a lot of momentum on the power play,” Mitch Marner said of those trips to the box post-game. “We gave them a chance on the power play. They’ve got a lot of skill that comes out and shows, so, you know, too many opportunities for them on the power play. 

“We let them feel good with the puck. And they made stuff happen when they got it.”