Well, at least Auston Matthews and William Nylander took accountability on Thursday night.
“Starts with me,” Matthews, the Maple Leafs captain, said after Toronto lost 5-1 to the St. Louis Blues at Scotiabank Arena.
And this from Nylander: “We’ve sure taken a dip. That’s on me and everybody else on the team to pick it up a notch.”
There was no response against the Blues, not the right one anyway, after the Leafs were beaten badly in Columbus by the Blue Jackets on Tuesday night.
While it’s too early to loudly sound alarm bells — the Leafs have played just eight games — the failures in the past two outings have to be fixed, and immediately. A two-game trip with stops in Boston and Winnipeg, on Saturday and Monday respectively, would have been difficult enough, never mind for a Leafs team that has completely abandoned the structural play that coach Craig Berube had them playing through the first six games.
The smart checking game that the Leafs got going from the opener in Montreal on Oct. 12 wasn’t evident in Columbus and didn’t re-appear against the Blues.
It doesn’t matter a heck of a lot now that, with some luck, the Leafs might have won all of those first six games and not just four. With a record of 4-4, and at minus-1 in goal differential, more than a bit of bloom has come off the Berube rose.
There’s plenty of time for the Leafs to get it back, and it starts with a return to the finish-your-check, defensively sound game that was being deployed through the first half-dozen games.
Earlier in the day, there wasn’t much concern in the Leafs room after the team had a full day off on Wednesday. That 6-2 loss to the Blue Jackets? A blip, was the message, and bouncing back in Berube’s first game against his former team, you could bet on that.
It’s not what transpired. If you’re going to rebound, your best players have to lead the way. That didn’t come close to happening on Thursday.
The line of Matthews between Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies was broken down continuously in the defensive zone and each finished a minus-3. Nylander committed a turnover in the offensive zone, something that doesn’t happen often, and the Blues took the puck down and scored. The miscue came before the third period was four minutes old and the goal by Jake Neighbours buried any hope the Leafs had of coming back, as it gave St. Louis a 4-1 lead.
Nylander said it was a “stupid” play on his part. No one tried arguing with him.
Defenceman Chris Tanev was on the ice for just six St. Louis shots on goal at five-on-five. But three of them beat goalie Joseph Woll.
Why did the inexcusable performance happen again after the Leafs weren’t good 48 hours earlier?
“I don’t know,” Matthews said. “I think it’s just a mindset, honestly. I don’t know.
“It shouldn’t. I think we’re a veteran group in here and we’re a good team, we believe we’re a good team and we should have responses after games like the previous (one) in Columbus. We didn’t have one.”
About the power play, cue the broken record. The Leafs keep talking about getting looks and getting the puck to the net more, yet they went 0-for-4 against the Blues and are 3-for-27 on the season. When the talent provided by Matthews, Marner, Nylander, John Tavares and Oliver Ekman-Larsson is on the top unit, that continued misfiring is ridiculous.
We asked Berube if the loss was harder to digest considering the players had talked about responding properly. We should have known better in asking a question that could provoke a yes or no answer, but Berube gave us a bit of a break.
“All losses are hard to digest,” Berube said. “Whether it’s this one, that one, they’re all hard to digest. We’ll look at stuff (Friday in practice) and get better.”
That would be the desire. Berube has evidence that the Leafs can be, and are, better. The video from the victory against Tampa Bay, just this past Monday, would reflect as much.
Matthews and Nylander said what needed to be said after the game, pointing the finger at themselves.
It’s on them to put some weight behind those words and drive the Leafs back into the win column, starting on Saturday against the Bruins.
X: @koshtorontosun