BOSTON — The Toronto Maple Leafs are looking back to last year for Game 2 inspiration.
It was a point of conversation after their series-opening blowout loss to the Boston Bruins that precisely the same thing happened in Game 1 of the first round last spring. That is, the Leafs were throttled 7-3 by the Tampa Bay Lightning and responded by throttling the Lightning in Game 2 with a 7-2 win of their own.
“It’s a playoff series,” Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said. “You’ve got to be able to bounce back.”
Where will that bounce-back need to come from? Here are five crucial areas of focus:
This feels like a two-pronged question. It’s not just about whether Nylander can play in Game 2. It’s whether he can be effective if he is able to suit up somehow.
Nylander was struggling down the stretch of the regular season before the injury. How much help can he offer at less, and maybe much less, than 100 percent? And if he can’t play, what then?
The Leafs really need his offence.
Nylander ranked 10th in league scoring during the regular season. He was second behind only Auston Matthews, among Leafs, with 40 goals and 98 points and actually led the team with 35 power-play points.
“He’s a huge part of our team,” Ryan Reaves said. “A guy who can put the puck in the net. A guy who can break out the puck by himself. He can carry the play. He does a little bit of everything.”
Added Jake McCabe: “He can create by himself, frankly — and seemingly out of nothing plays.”
The Leafs scored only one goal in Game 1 without him. Other than Matthews, nobody had a lot cooking, including on the power play.
It’s much easier for the Bruins to contain Matthews there if Nylander isn’t lurking on the other side of the ice. And indeed, Matthews didn’t register a shot attempt during the nearly three minutes of five-on-four action. (He missed the net with a pair of attempts during the four-on-three power play in the second frame of Game 1.)
Nylander is also instrumental in helping the Leafs wade through the neutral zone to gain entry into the offensive zone on the power play.
“That would be an area that you would miss William for sure,” Keefe said. “But the other guys are more than capable of finding their way through that.”
Nylander was the Leafs’ most reliable scorer in the previous three postseasons, topping even Matthews (10) with 12 goals. This team isn’t one-dimensional without him, but much, much less dangerous offensively.
2. Where will the goals come from?
Matthews has to score, not necessarily in Game 2, but in the series for the Leafs to have a chance of advancing.
He was responsible for 23 percent of the team’s goals during the regular season. He finished with 29 more than Nylander.
The Leafs saw in the second round of last year’s postseason what happens when Matthews isn’t able to bury his chances. (They lose.)
The Bruins took an interesting approach against him in Game 1. While they used the Charlie Coyle line for matchup purposes, as expected, Boston also unexpectedly teamed up Hampus Lindholm and Brandon Carlo on the back end to counter Matthews.
That was not the way they practised in the lead-up to the opener.
Bruins coach Jim Montgomery opted for the length of Carlo, who’s listed at 6-foot-5 and well over 200 pounds, in place of Charlie McAvoy, alongside Lindholm, a large player himself at 6-foot-4 and 224 pounds.
The ploy kind of worked: In the nearly seven minutes of head-to-head action, the Leafs won just 25 percent of the expected goals when Matthews’ line was on the ice against Lindholm and Carlo. And of course, Matthews didn’t score.
Matthews has had trouble, relatively speaking, with longer defenders in the Lindholm/Carlo mould at playoff time over the years.
He still had a couple good looks in Game 1, including one that clanged off the post.
I wonder when we see him reunite with Mitch Marner. If it’s not right away in Game 2, it’s coming soon after if that unit starts sluggishly again.
Who else can the Maple Leafs look to for goals beyond Auston Matthews? (Bob DeChiara / USA Today)
My question: Who else can the Leafs look to for goals beyond Matthews and, if he’s unavailable, Nylander?
Jeremy Swayman hasn’t lost to the Leafs all season. He’s surrendered five goals in four games against them.
John Tavares was third on the Leafs with 29 goals during the regular season. He’s scored only once, however, in his last 10 playoff games. His best looks in Game 1 came on a four-on-three power play.
Can he create some more opportunities in Game 2, especially from in and around the net where he’s most dangerous?
What about Marner? It’s often overlooked that he’s scored at a 30-goal pace in each of the past four regular seasons, but, like Tavares, the playoffs have been a different story. Marner has buried only 10 goals in 50 career playoff games. He has only three goals in the last 17 of those games and only one in the last 10.
The playoffs are why the Leafs signed both Max Domi and Tyler Bertuzzi in free agency, both for the bite they might offer and the offence they might provide in support of the stars. Domi will help the attack with his playmaking. Bertuzzi? He’s there to score. After Matthews, Bertuzzi’s 15 goals over the final 30 games of the regular season were tops on the Leafs.
He was quiet with only two shots in 15.5 minutes of Game 1.
Not having Bobby McMann hurts the prospect of depth scoring for the Leafs. He scored 13 goals over his last 30 games. He won’t be around for Game 2.
Is there a way to move Calle Järnkrok up in the lineup? He had real pace in his first game back from injury.
Two clear areas of focus for the Leafs attack for Monday night’s game:
- Be more direct in attacking the net. Less east-west, more north-south.
- Put pucks in better spots for forecheckers to retrieve and go to work.
“We gotta get in their zone a lot cleaner, with a lot more pace,” said Reaves.
3. Can the penalty kill get it together?
This was a huge problem during the regular season obviously, so it wasn’t exactly surprising to see the Leafs get burned twice short-handed in the second period after two solid kills in the opening frame.
More surprisingly: It was the Bruins’ No. 2 power-play unit that did the damage, with both goals coming from Jake DeBrusk. (It’s a scary prospect for the Leafs to be blown out when David Pastrňák records only a single assist on an empty-netter.)
The Leafs probably need a save from Ilya Samsonov on the first of the two goals, which came off a DeBrusk wrister from about 26 feet out. Among the 41 goalies to log at least 150 minutes of PK time during the regular season, Samsonov ranked fourth from the bottom with an .826 save percentage.
Will the Leafs tweak personnel in Game 2? We’ll get to TJ Brodie in a second, but if he gets back in, he’s rejoining the PK. What about up front? Goals were scored against the Järnkrok-Pontus Holmberg pairing as well as the Matthew Knies-Connor Dewar combination.
In other words, the second and third forward groups.
This is yet another area where not having Nylander around hurts. He was the team’s third-most utilized forward on the penalty kill during the regular season.
Not having Nylander (as well as McMann) means someone else is moving up and playing more — such as Knies, who was burned on the second DeBrusk goal.
It’s probably time to get Matthews more involved here. The Leafs were careful about Matthews’ PK usage during the regular season, lest they wear him out. The coaching staff is also mindful that Matthews is the top even-strength scorer on the planet. One shift on the PK means one less shift at even strength.
And yet, why sprinkle Matthews onto the PK all season if not to use him when it matters most?
Matthews got only late PK scraps in Game 1, totalling 29 seconds.
Matthews can still sometimes look like the inexperienced penalty killer he is. But he’s also a menace on the puck (second in the NHL in takeaways during the regular season) and the threat of him out there, especially if he’s with Marner, will inevitably increase the pressure on the Boston power play.
Matthews registered nine shots on 14 attempts in just 58 minutes of PK time during the regular season.
The Leafs simply lack great options here, both in experience and skill.
They did find some success during a brief pocket late in the regular season. The keys there: All kinds of pressure on the puck and consistent clears of it whenever the chance to do so was there.
4. Should TJ Brodie re-enter the lineup?
Nobody played more even-strength minutes during the regular season for the Leafs than Brodie. It has to be a first (I think?) for a player who does that to then be a healthy scratch at the start of the postseason.
Only Morgan Rielly and Marner played more minutes, period, during last year’s playoffs than Brodie.
Among the reasons to get him back in the lineup for Game 2:
- He’s arguably their best (or second-best) penalty killer on defence (though he didn’t have a great regular season there).
- He’s a much better puck mover than half the defenders (Edmundson, Simon Benoit and Ilya Lyubushkin) who often struggled to move the puck in Game 1.
- He’s well-equipped, because of his experience, to handle a raucous Boston atmosphere.
Ilya Lyubushkin played the fewest minutes of any Leafs defender in the opener. (John Jones / USA Today)
As expected, Lyubushkin played the fewest minutes of any Leafs defender in the opener — just under 15.
He had predictable issues slinging the puck into the hands of the forwards. However, his minutes were largely a success for the Leafs: They outshot the Bruins 10-3 at five-on-five. The Leafs are clearly willing to put up with Lyubushkin’s puck-moving adventures for the size and muscle he offers.
Then there’s Timothy Liljegren, who played 18 minutes in Game 1. His minutes were less successful: The Leafs had an expected goals mark of 31 percent when he was out there. The physicality of the Bruins seemed to bother him at times. Patrick Maroon dumped him into the Bruins bench at one point.
And yet, he brings the kind of puck-moving ability the Leafs need and lack otherwise.
We’ve seen Keefe replace Liljegren in postseasons past, and it would be all too easy to simply slide Brodie into his spot alongside Edmundson. The other option is to remove Lyubushkin.
Having said all that, outside of the penalty kill, the Leafs didn’t give up much in the opener. Just 32 shot attempts at five-on-five, which would have been the second-fewest for them during the regular season. Pastrňák was held shot-less at five-on-five.
Still, my thought: Play Brodie.
5. Will the Leafs control their emotions and limit unforced errors?
“Obviously we have to be more disciplined in our game and obviously stay out of the box.”
That was John Tavares, but it was after Game 1 of the playoffs last season.
In short, the Leafs had this issue a year ago. Overly emotional in the opener before calming down in Game 2. I kind of think we see the same thing here.
“It was the sticks and the penalties that really didn’t have an impact on the play that we have to eliminate,” Reaves said.
The Leafs took six minors in Game 1: One for hooking (Benoit); two for high sticking (Bertuzzi and Matthews); one for roughing (Domi); one for slashing (Domi); and one for interference (McCabe).
It’s the Domi foul, a slash on the hands of Brad Marchand, that was most egregious and a point of emphasis ahead of Game 2.
“He just crossed the line there,” Keefe said.
The Maple Leafs need to be cautious around Brad Marchand. (Bob DeChiara / USA Today)
If there is one guy for the Leafs to be even more cautious around it’s Marchand. He has the ability to goad the Leafs into crossing the line some more as this series rolls along. He had Domi boiling on the opening faceoff and drew retaliatory penalties from both Domi and McCabe during the last regular-season meeting between these two teams. He loves the spotlight and figures to do something that induces rage from his opponent. This is a guy who licked not one but two opponents over the years.
“That’s part of his game,” McCabe said. “He’s been doing it for a long time. He gets the notoriety in the media for it. Just gotta play him hard like everyone else.”
The Leafs can’t beat themselves in this series with penalties or unforced errors like the one that handed the Bruins the opening goal in Game 1. A pinch from Edmundson and a hit from Reaves soon after that left the D exposed.
The Bruins will pounce on mistakes like that.
—Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference, and Evolving Hockey
(Top photo: Julian Avram / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
