BROOKLYN, N.Y.— Exiting the Maple Leafs dressing room in the wake of Monday’s 6-5 overtime loss to the New York Islanders, Maple Leafs goaltender Frederik Andersen looked like he wanted to punch something. Maybe a slow-to-react defenceman would have been a cathartic target.
Andersen opted instead to take out his post-game frustration on an object only slightly more inanimate, slamming the meaty part of his fist into a cinder-block wall. And you could understand his frustration.
“We’ve got to be a little bit tougher around our net,” Andersen said a while later. “They’re getting to loose pucks a little too quickly. We’ve got to be able to get the puck out of there.”
Certainly that was the running theme of Monday’s helter-skelter repeat of Saturday’s 6-5 win over the Bruins in Boston. Two nights after squandering a 4-1 second-period lead to the Bruins before emerging victorious, the Maple Leafs took a 4-2 lead into the second intermission and headed home with only a loser point to show for it.
“We had the game won and we gave it up,” lamented head coach Mike Babcock.
That’s the league-worst ninth time this season the Maple Leafs have turned a two-period lead into less than two points. And in this particular case it had plenty to do with the team’s chronic inability to defend in front of its net. The Islanders scored too easily, too often. Ryan Strome banged in his own rebound to make it 1-0 after Morgan Rielly was too slow to react. Nikolay Kulemin and Brock Nelson added regulation-time goals when they found themselves roaming free and clean in what’s supposed to be one of hockey’s dirty areas.
And the defensive breakdowns weren’t limited to the net-front vicinity. Nelson scored the overtime winner — his second of the night — after the Maple Leafs surrendered a 3-on-1 rush midway through the 3-on-3 portion of the chance-trading affair.
In the end, the Leafs emerged with a vital point in the standings and plenty of teachable moments for the video archives.
“You’re disappointed. It’s always good to get a point on the road, and if it was 2-1, I probably wouldn’t feel like I do right now,” Babcock said. “When you give up six goals — and especially some of the mistakes we made defensively — for me, to give up free tap-ins by our net is not good enough. So we’ve got to get that fixed in a hurry.”
Fixing it won’t be easy, not with nine games in the coming 15 days as the post-all-star-break schedule hits a particularly dense patch.
“We haven’t practised in forever,” Babcock said. “But I think those are excuses. You can fix it on video, and then you’ve got to commit to doing it right. You can’t give up a 3-on-1 in overtime. You can’t be on the wrong side of people when they’re shooting it in your net. So we’ve got to do a better job.”
If the job is to score more goals than the opponents, the Leafs looked to be doing it well for much of the evening. For the dozens of Maple Leaf fans in attendance at Barclays Center, Monday’s game amounted to a showcase for Toronto’s travelling troupe of star rookies. All five Toronto goals were scored Calder Trophy-eligible players: Mitch Marner, William Nylander, Nikita Soshnikov, Auston Matthews and Zach Hyman.
Hyman established a Toronto rookie record by scoring his third short-handed goal of the season to make it 4-2 midway through the second period. Marner scored his third goal in the past four games, a hot stretch in which he’s also added three assists. Rookie Nikita Zaitsev chipped in two assists.
But let’s just say Babcock was not providing post-game plaudits for such numbers.
“It’s not about racing to 10 each night. It might look good in the personal stats. Personal stats don’t add up to winning,” the coach said. “What you do as a team is what’s important. You sacrifice some individual rights for team rights. To me, we weren’t good enough.”
The game certainly began in a way that’s become recently familiar to Leaf fans — with defenceman Morgan Rielly momentarily struggling to keep the pace. Still nursing a high ankle sprain, Rielly was on the ice a Strome buried that rebound past Andersen. Before the game head coach Mike Babcock had offered some words of advice to Rielly through the media about dealing with his ailment.
“Just forget you have an injury. Just get out there and get playing,” Babcock urged. “When you have something like he has, you’re going to get a stinger every once in a while. When you play the game and you get the stinger, (then) you keep playing the game and you realize that’s what’s going to happen, I think you’re way ahead of the game. It was important to go through what he had in the last game (when Rielly aggravated the injury in a tangle with David Backes).”
“There’s a lot of guys in this room who are battling through bumps and bruises. We’re all grinding. We’re all dealing with stuff,” Rielly said. “You do whatever you have to do to keep yourself in the lineup. But there’s lots of guys doing it — not just me.”
Andersen, who allowed five regulation-time goals against for the third straight start, is certainly grinding his gears. He’s allowed a combined 19 goals in four starts since the all-star break. His save percentage in those four outings is an ugly .833. It’s the kind of number that makes a guy want to punch something.
“We know we’re a talented group with the puck,” Andersen said. “We’ve got to be just as talented without the puck to win.”
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