MONTREAL – This was the start Jonathan Bernier so badly wanted on opening night. The one he had to wait almost two months to get.
And wouldn’t you know that it would only be 20 seconds into his first game as a playing member of the Toronto Maple Leafs at Bell Centre before his team was short-handed. Then it was only about 30 seconds after that when he looked up and saw Max Pacioretty coming in on a breakaway.
Bernier turned away the scorching-hot Montreal Canadiens winger on the initial shot before stopping him on the second and third one as well. Pacioretty eventually made good as the goaltender desperately waited for one of his teammates to do something – anything – to help him out.
“I thought shoot because sometimes you get a second crack at it,” Pacioretty explained after Saturday’s 4-2 Montreal victory. “In that case I got four cracks at it.”
The Habs would rack up seven shots in addition to the 1-0 lead in the opening two minutes alone. The sky was once again falling for a Leafs team that feebly closed out November with a 4-6-3 record.
It was a stretch that showed Toronto’s style of play to be as unsustainable as many in the advanced statistics community predicted back in October – particularly as it pertained to the goaltending. Bernier and James Reimer played out of their minds in the first month of the season and have slowly drifted back to the pack since then, with this being the third straight start where Bernier surrendered at least four goals.
Of course, he faced another 39-shot barrage and at some point you can’t rely on him to carry the entire team on his back – although Bernier intends to try and do just that.
“I’ve just got to refocus,” he said. “It’s a long season. There’s lots of games and you’re going to have ups and downs. I just have to find a way to get my game back.”
The other key ingredient to a 10-4-0 run through October for the Leafs was special teams and that also started to slide on them in the second month of the season – hurting them against the Habs on Saturday, too.
Pacioretty’s power-play goal was the 15th Toronto has given up in the last 13 games alone. That has been accompanied by a precipitous fall in the NHL rankings for a team that was No. 1 in that category during the lockout-shortened campaign.
“It’s the same guys as last year, so we’re not going to panic on it,” said Leafs centre Tyler Bozak. “I think we’ve taken more penalties this year than we did all of last year so there’s obviously going to be more goals against when you’re taking more penalties. But I think we’ve just got to try and stay out of the box a little bit more and just bear down.”
It didn’t help that Pacioretty’s second of the night came short-handed. He turned Carl Gunnarsson inside-out before making it 4-0 – a goal he celebrated by dramatically putting his stick away like a sword. That clearly angered the Leafs, who responded with two goals just 22 seconds apart before the second intermission.
“That’s when we finally got involved in the game,” said Leafs coach Randy Carlyle. “We got emotionally mad. We were better after that. It was kind of like that’s what stirred the pot. That’s where we have to question ourselves: Is why didn’t we have that for the first 20 minutes?”
One reason might be the fact the team was playing for the fifth time in eight days – although the Leafs players weren’t interested in playing that card. Montreal certainly seemed to have more than enough energy and it was facing a third game in four nights.
There was a playoff-like atmosphere in the arena, which was fitting given that these are the only two Canadian-based NHL teams currently holding down post-season position. Toronto and Montreal sit in the Eastern Conference’s two wild card spots.
Unless the Leafs can find a way to stem the tide in December, they might not be there for long. The message that keeps being repeated again and again in the dressing room is that they just have to stay with the program until the results eventually return.
The Leafs have experienced their share of bad luck and a waived-off Dion Phaneuf goal in the first period was another example of that. The referees felt that James van Riemsdyk’s presence at the top of Carey Price’s crease was enough to call that one back.
“If I say anything it’s an excuse,” said Carlyle. “When I viewed it I have my point of view and it’s obviously not the same one as the referee thought.”
However, even if it counted the end result would have been the same. Montreal outplayed the Leafs over 60 minutes and that’s been an all-too-common occurrence for a group that once prided itself on hard work.