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The Toronto Maple Leafs once again face a number of questions about motivation, talent issues on defense, and inconsistency after an incomplete effort in a 4-3 overtime loss to the San Jose Sharks on Thursday. The Leafs seemed to take an opponent expected to be at the bottom of the NHL standings this season for granted, as they never led once and played catch-up for most of the night.
David Kampf, Mitch Marner, and Auston Matthews scored for Toronto, and Erik Kallgren made 27 saves in the loss, that saw the Leafs fall to 4-3-1 on the season, but more importantly, 0-2-1 against clubs (Montreal, Arizona, and San Jose) expected to be competing for positioning for the NHL Draft Lottery instead of a playoff spot.
"I thought that San Jose's best players were giving us a real hard time. We had a hard time handling that and we couldn't get much going every time those guys got on the ice and tilted the ice." Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said after the game. "We've got a lot of really good players, a lot of skill on our team and we're just not connecting on passes, tape-to-tape passes that we're just either making the wrong decision, passing the wrong guy or holding on too long and it gets disrupted."
Toronto trailed most of the game, falling behind 26 seconds in on a Logan Couture goal before Kampf responded with his third goal of the season. A rare double penalty to TJ Brodie and Pierre Engvall give the Sharks a full two-minute five-on-three power play in the middle frame, and Couture and Timo Meier took advantage to give San Jose a 3-1 lead. The Leafs top combo finally broke loose late in the game, as Marner narrowed the lead late in the second on a nice three-way passing play with Morgan Rielly and Alex Kerfoot to make it 3-2, and Matthews tied the game with a blast on the power play.
Unfortunately, the Leafs were undone by a long stretch where they did not dominate play and defensive errors that ended up in the back of their net. On Couture’s opening goal, Rasmus Sandin pinched along the boards, Justin Holl drifted from his position and lost a puck battle and the Sharks center outhustled Matthews to the front of the net.
On the game-winner, William Nylander could not win a race against Karlsson, pulled up and threw a careless pass across the middle to Sandin that was intercepted by Meier and sprung the two-time Norris Trophy winner on a breakaway.
"(The) big problem for us (is) our inability to move the puck up the ice efficiently keeps slowing down our game on offense and it's really hurting your game defensively as well, because we're just getting stressed. In the second period, we can never get our defense off the ice, because we just couldn't move the puck up."Keefe said. "It starts with the D, their first touch has to be better.....It's a lack of execution. We've got to be able to move the puck efficiently."
The absence of Timothy Liljegren, compounded by the loss of Jake Muzzin has made the Leafs load more minutes on Rielly, TJ Brodie, and Mark Giordano than they would like, but it is also forcing them to be more dependent on Holl to play near or more than 20 minutes per night, which has proven to be a recipe for disaster the last few seasons. *******