TORONTO — With the stands at Scotiabank Arena full of plastic masks, outlandish wigs, blue-and-white jerseys stuffed under all manner of comical costumes, the home crowd rang in Halloween 2023 by raining boos down upon their Toronto Maple Leafs Tuesday night.
The barrage came 40 minutes into an evening that saw the home side come out lifeless against the quicker, steadier Los Angeles Kings, and ultimately find themselves unable to rise again before the tilt was through.
“We were flat from the start,” a perturbed coach Sheldon Keefe said of his club after the eventual 4-1 loss was in the books. “We had a couple surges through the game at different times but nothing sustained. You know, you’re climbing out of a hole against a very good, structured team, it’s tough sledding.”
The misery started early for his Maple Leafs in this one. From the opening minutes, Toronto looked a mess in its own zone, the puck skittering around netminder Joseph Woll’s general vicinity just a bit too much. On the other end of the sheet, the Maple Leafs didn’t fare much better, their attack seeming to lack any sense of fluidity or cohesion.
“Obviously, we had a tough time getting through the neutral zone, creating zone entries with possession,” a quiet Morgan Rielly said from the locker room post-game. “They did a good job — they play a specific structure, and we had a tough time getting through it.”
“They were quick, they used their speed,” Leafs captain John Tavares added. “We’ve got to do a better job of recognizing that we’re a little flat and that our game maybe isn’t where we want it to be, and how we get that going and grab momentum back. Obviously, it took us too long to get that going.”
The visiting Kings had stacked three goals on the board by the time Toronto managed to finally break through and avoid the shutout with a power-play marker midway through the final period. Woll was given little help by the group in front of him on all three of the plays that had wound up in the back of his net. The lone Leafs goal didn’t alter that trend, the Kings answering with a fourth tally a few minutes later as the blue-and-white’s sloppiness in their own zone burned them for the third time on the night.
Even before it got to that point, Toronto had its chances to find some life, some rhythm, before things got out of hand, the club granted three man-advantage opportunities through those abysmal 40 minutes. But much like the rest of the night, the chances slipped through their fingers.
“It was like a lot of the rest of our game — our execution just wasn’t as sharp,” said Tavares, who managed the Leafs’ only goal, of the power-play stumbles. “At times we have to be a little bit more direct and let the work rate allow momentum to build, and the game to come to you. Just being a little bit quicker in a lot of areas, and not trying to do too much.”
The club’s lead playmaker similarly mulled a change in approach after a night that saw his team stymied at every turn offensively, until it was too late.
“I think I need to be more of a threat as a shooter,” Leafs winger Mitch Marner said post-game, thinking through the ongoing stretch of disconnected play between himself and linemate Auston Matthews. “Be a little more selfish in those areas so that it opens up Auston a little more. We’ve just got to have trust in our game. When we’re going well, we’re getting in on the forecheck, we’re stripping pucks.
“We’ve had moments of that throughout the season, just not enough. We know we’ve got to be better. And we will be better.”
Still, his coach made clear the issue on this night went far beyond the power play, or the top line, or his big guns misfiring.
“We need everybody. Even when our top guys are going, we need everybody,” Keefe said. “Nobody had it tonight. New guys, old guys, guys who’ve been here, guys who haven’t been here — nobody had it tonight.”
You could argue William Nylander did, the club’s leading scorer seeming the only bright spot all night as he tried to paper over the holes in Toronto’s game with effortless rushes up ice, glimpses of all-world skill as he weaved through traffic and tried to spark something. In the end, even that wasn’t enough.
It’s early, of course. The power play will round into form. Nos. 34 and 16 will go back to stacking points like they long have. But the veterans on the roster are well aware of the deeper issues a night like this one exposes.
“These are the games that you want to learn from,” said Rielly in the wake of the loss. “You want to learn how to win against teams that play this way. I think it’s a good chance for us to watch some video, talk about what we need to do better, and next time we come up against a team that plays as tight as they do, we’ve got to be better prepared as players.
“There comes a time where you’ve just got to find more, you’ve just got to be more competitive. You’ve got to work harder.”
Added Tavares: “With where we want to go, that’s the type of hockey we’re going to be playing against. We have to get comfortable with, and understand, the way we need to play to have success.”
The latest loss comes amid a hectic stretch for the Maple Leafs, who are fresh off a five-game road trip that saw them go 3-1-1, saw them play some good hockey against some dangerous teams, and who now head back out for an away game in Boston on Thursday.
But for Keefe, the potential fatigue factor, the emotional rollercoaster of seeing a three-game win streak snapped in an overtime heartbreaker against a former teammate’s new squad — it all matters little in terms of the larger lesson his team is still trying to learn.
“It’s the NHL. Every team’s going to go through stuff like this,” the coach said Tuesday night. “You’ve got to push through it and you’ve got to find a way. There are no excuses tonight — you’ve got to find a way. There are things that we could’ve done better. Sometimes you really have your A-game, everything’s clicking; sometimes you’ve got lots of energy but you’re not sharp with the puck and you’ve got to adapt and adjust your game; sometimes you don’t have energy so you need to be better in different ways, your special teams need to carry you.
“Find a way, don’t find an excuse.”