It’s one of the great mysteries of this Maple Leafs season. How can an uber-skilled squad that promises to bring the franchise back to prominence have such difficulty coming back from deficits?
Heading into Tuesday’s game against the Islanders the Maple Leafs ranked dead last in the NHL with a .063 winning percentage in games in which they trailed after the first period. Sixteen times they’ve trailed at the first intermission. Only once have they emerged from the evening with a victory.
In some ways, it doesn’t add up. Shouldn’t a team running sixth in the league in goals per game, faced with a self-dug hole, have the resources and firepower to at least occasionally blast its way back into two points? You’d think so. But as the season was about to pass the two-thirds mark on Tuesday, the scarce veteran voices in the Toronto locker room pointed out what they see as an NHL truism. If the young Maple Leafs thought it was difficult to engineer comebacks in the season’s early going, it promises to get tougher in the stretch run.
“I wish we knew the answer (to why the Leafs haven’t often come from behind to win),” said Frederik Andersen after he was among a handful of Maple Leafs who took a morning skate from which the team’s regular skaters were exempt. “But I think games are getting tougher to come back in. You’re seeing lower scoring. Once you get down, it’s tough to come back. So it’s one of those things: You’ve got to come out taking it to them instead of sitting around and waiting.”
In other words: Hint, hint, fellas. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that the Maple Leafs, who’d built a first-intermission lead in just one of their previous eight games, had come away with just two wins in that eight-game span.
“I think good teams in this league, when they get the lead, it’s hard to score on them,” said Matt Martin, the Maple Leafs grinder who played 24 post-season games with the Islanders over the past handful of springs. “These playoff teams that have been around a long time, you give them a one-, two-goal lead and they know how to hold onto it.”
To that point, the likes of San Jose, Los Angeles, Washington and Tampa Bay were all converting first-intermission leads into victories at a rate of over 80 per cent heading into Tuesday’s slate of games. The Penguins had converted 22 second-intermission advantages into 22 wins. And as much as, yes, the Maple Leafs have exhibited a habit of coughing up points in games in which they led in the third period, and as much as that’s still an issue — well, lately the focus has been on getting back in the routine of actually getting the early jump on teams.
“The first goal is an important goal for us,” Martin said. “At this point in the season, wins and goals and points are harder to come by. We need to get off to a good start. We haven’t been showing up on time the last few games.”
Saturday’s 3-1 loss to the Sabres was the latest case in point. And head coach Mike Babcock could only hope what he described as a good practice on Monday would set his team up for better beginnings to come.
“When you’re bad, you earn the right to be bad,” Babcock said. “We were bad at the start. They skated and they competed. We made big-time mistakes . . . If you do good things, good things will happen. To me it’s real fair. Over time, the hockey gods reward the teams that play the best most nights.”
If the Leafs don’t play better off the jump, it’s hard to like their chances of weathering the season’s final couple of months clinging to a playoff spot. Their inability to pick themselves up after a first-intermission deficit is rare but not unprecedented. In the past 20 NHL seasons a shortlist of NHL teams have done worse in that scenario. The 1998-99 Lightning, whose leading scorers were Darcy Tucker and Wendel Clark, trailed 30 times after 20 minutes and never bounced back for a single win. But they finished dead last in the league that year. The 1999-00 Sabres won one of 21 in which they trailed after one. But they were an offensively challenged squad with the league’s worst power play.
The 2005-06 Penguins managed just two wins in 36 games in which they found themselves down at the first break. They had Sidney Crosby, but he was an 18-year-old rookie. The Penguins finished 29th in a 30-team league. All these years later, heading into Tuesday the Crosby-powered Penguins led the league in coming back from after-20-minute deficits. Nineteen times they’ve trailed. Eleven times they’ve arrived at the final horn two points richer. It’s the kind of conversion rate Toronto can, for now, only aspire to achieve.
“When we have the lead, it’s something we’ve got to learn to lock down. But when we don’t have it, we have to learn to climb back in,” Martin said. “It’s not an easy thing to do.”
No, it’s not. And history suggests experience may be the only reliable teacher.
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