Leafs Postgame: Lifeless Against Long Island (4-1 New York)

Well, its officially a slump now. Loser points be damned, the Toronto Maple Leafs have now lost five of their last six games, dropping a grudge match on Saturday Night against the New York islanders.

The Rundown

While Toronto had the initial wave of pressure in this one, the Islanders were first to strike six minutes in Anthony Duclair and JG Pageau worked to win a puck along the boards off of Kirill Marchenko, and after Pageau sent the puck back to Duclair, he opened up his blade and sent a cross-body wrister past an unprepared Sergei Bobrovsky. Scoring paused for over a period, but with a minute and a half remaining in the second, a missed clear by Troy Stecher was recovered by Bo Horvat, who dished it off and went to the net for a juicy rebound.

Toronto broke Ilya Sorokin’s shutout in the third period, as Stecher found some redmption with a point shot that deflected off of Colton Sissons and into the back of the net. The Leafs had more control of the third than any othe rperiod, though much of that was on the backs of two unsuccessful powerplays. Instead of finding the tying goal with those opportunities, they would instead concede the dagger shortly after the second opportunity. Simon Holmstrom was left unattented by three Leafs skaters in front of the net, and with Bobrovsky barely reacting either, was able to roof a wrister. Holmstrom added an empty netter with two minutes remaining.

Notes

• For those wondering what the response would be to the whole McKenna drama thing, right of the hop, his ice time shot up to 17:56. In fact, usage in general seemed to smooth out, with Zack MacEwen also seeing his ice time nearly doube and most of the team’s forwards landing in the 14-16 minute range. In McKenna’s case specifically, he picked up four shots on goal but didn’t land on the score sheet.
• You know it’s an unproductive night for your skaters when the Game Score leader for your team is a guy who deflected a far away point shot, didn’t do much else, and ended up a dash-1. With Sissons, Stecher, and Cowan having the only points on the team tonight, a lot of positive streaks ended.
• One streak that didn’t end, pointed out by Sportsnet Stats – Sergei Bobrovsky has let in three or more goals in every game he’s played this season, the first Leafs goalie to start his season as such since Vesa Toskala in 2009. You can argue that the shots against him haven’t been easy on some nights, and Goals Save Above Expected will agree with you, but you committed to a 38-year-old because you believed him to be a pack-separator and he has not been that. In case you’re curious, Toskala’s streak ended in Game 9.
• There’s some noise about the Leafs sitting 23rd in expected goals at this stage of the season, which doesn’t concern me too much, as xG and location based stats aren’t really good for medium-term looks – they’re best predictive in bigger samples, and fun descriptions of what happened in smaller ones. Now, them matching that up with sitting in 24th in Corsi? A bit more worrisome. A 46.5% share of the shot attempts at 5v5 is better than the 44.8 from last year, but is still lottery material if it lasts for very long. You might be able to dismiss this as an effect of playing three west contenders and Buffalo in a row, but given that they’ve only come out in the green twice out of nine games so far, they’re going to have to show us something soon here if we’re supposed to believe they can control play.
• Jim Hiller said after criticism following the Buffalo game that the Leafs wouldn’t play as cautious with the lead next time around. That problem seemed solved last night, but more in the “never had the lead” sense. It’s understood that the Islanders are a stifling team, but there was zero sign of assertativeness even in the pushback, which you would hope that a home team looking to be better this year would show.

Up Next

The Maple Leafs have a night off today before diving straight into a back-to-back. The first of their two upcoming games will come when they host the San Jose Sharks on Monday night. That’ll be a 7:30 puck drop.

Numbers Game

Top Performers	Bottom Performers	Top Opponents
1. Colton Sissons (1.67) 1G, 0A, 1 SOG, -1, 79% xG	1. William Nylander (-2.11) 0G, 0A, 1 SOG, -3, 19% xG	1. Simon Holmstrom (3.01) 2G, 0A, 2 SOG, +3, 72% xG
2. Easton Cowan (1.01) 0G, 1A, 2 SOG, 73% xG	2. Morgan Rielly (-1.78) 0G, 0A, 1 SOG, -1, 33% xG	2. Bo Horvat (2.92) 1G, 1A, 2 SOG, +2, 61% xG
3. Darren Raddysh (0.83) 0G, 0A, 3 SOG, -1, 63% xG	3. Teddy Blueger (-1.39) 0G, 0A, 2 SOG, -2, 42% xG	3. Ilya Sorokin (2.60) 28 Saves, 1 GA on 3.60 xGA

Shots On Goal	29-20 TOR	Faceoffs	23 for 45
5v5 Shot Attempts	49-30 NYI	Hits	29-18 NYI
5v5 Expected Goals	1.79 – 1.47 NYI	Blocked Shots	18-4 TOR
Best Period (xG)	5v5: 1st (69%) All: 3rd (83%)	Powerplay	0 for 3 (5 shots)
Worst Period (xG)	5v5: 2nd (37%) All: 1st (42%)	Penalty Kill	2 for 2 (2 shots)

Table 1: Game Score via Dom, HockeyStatCards reccomended for full-game results
Table 2: Derived from NHL.com and Natural Stat Trick
Heatmap: via Natural Stat Trick