I hate it here.
For the seventh straight time, the Toronto Maple Leafs have failed to win a game where they have a chance to advance to the second round. I’m willing to bet they’ll extend it to 8 come Monday.
I don’t know why we keep letting them do this to us. Another late surge to overcome a deficit after one of their worst games of the season, then a garbage turnover leads to the overtime loss. All that’s left to be seen is how they manage to catastrophically blow it on Monday. Will it be a shocking collapse like 2013? Will they fail to score despite getting loads of shots like 2020? Who knows? All we know is that there’s no way this franchise is ever going to win a playoff round, so we might as well pack it up and go.
I’m going to put just about as much effort into this blog as the Leafs did into this game. So none. I’m not going through it goal by goal. You probably saw it. If you didn’t, good for you. The Seattle Kraken look real exciting.
Bright spots:
HAH: Not a chance.
Bad spots:
Mitch Marner: Completely invisible for the first two periods, and can’t finish a damn thing in the last two. Also he got a delay of game penalty while on the penalty kill because he tried to send the puck all the way to Mars. Marner’s horrendous series continues. After the game, Marner was quoted saying: "We just didn't come ready to play at the start of the game. We really do have to start on time because it's getting said a lot, and it's not good enough." Which is really funny, because it sounds a lot like what the Leafs have said after being eliminated in the past 4 years. Mitch, you make eleven million dollars to play for this team, it is your job to show up in these games. And yet time and time again, he has not. It’s unacceptable.
Auston Matthews: Ctrl C+Ctrl V everything I said against Marner. One of the worst games I’ve ever seen from Matthews. Up until the overtime, he just didn’t do anything. Somebody needs to wake these two up somehow, and that’s on Sheldon Keefe. Speaking of which…
Sheldon Keefe: The power play has vanished for months, and yet somehow, Joe Thornton is still out there, standing in the crease, being completely useless. Keefe has failed to put this team in a position to succeed, and he has failed to give them any sort of motivation to win anything.
Travis Dermott: In Dermott’s defence, it was inevitable that at some point in that overtime a bad Leafs turnover would lead to a goal. In his not-defence, what in the name of Johnny Bower’s jockstrap was that?? An entirely unnecessary spin, losing the puck, leaving Kotkaniemi in all alone to win the game. Pathetic.
Tweets of the Night: It’s a busy one tonight.
Cannot get over how stupid that penalty was.
They will not. They never are. Good luck in round two Montreal.
It was inevitable.
Overall Grade: F-
Pathetic game. Enough said.
Next up: Last game of the season goes Monday.