Free-falling Maple Leafs can’t catch a break

The Maple Leafs gave up two goals in less than four minutes en route to their eighth straight defeat, this time a 3-1 come-from-behind loss to the Arizona Coyotes.

TORONTO — Before we get into ugly losing streaks or the possibility of trades or the Toronto Maple Leafs forwards being lost in the desert, we must first ponder this:

How much has to go right (or wrong) for Oliver Ekman-Larsson to score a goal on Jonathan Bernier from 114 feet out?

For starters, this definitely doesn’t happen if Arizona isn’t killing a penalty at the start of the third period. And it probably doesn’t happen if Ekman-Larsson doesn’t wear sweater No. 23.

That’s because the sublime young defenceman told me that he recalls looking up at the scoreboard just before the faceoff and being reminded that there was still 23 seconds of short-handed time remaining for the Coyotes. It’s the only reason he didn’t hesitate before lofting the puck into Toronto’s zone from his own side of centre ice after Lauri Korpikoski won the draw back to him.

(He would have risked icing at even strength after all).

A strange thing happened as the puck floated through the air, too: Much like a golfer or basketball player visualizing his shot, it dawned on him that he had timed everything just right.

“You know when you get that feeling like ‘Oh, this one’s going to go in?”‘ said Ekman-Larsson. “I felt it right away.”



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The entire sequence lasted just five seconds. It was the quickest short-handed goal to start a period in the entire 98-year history of the NHL, according to Elias Sports Bureau, and it ended up sinking the Maple Leafs on Thursday night.

“I was just trying to get it deep,” Ekman-Larsson explained after a 3-1 Arizona win. “It was a lucky break. It’s my lucky number I guess.”

The luck was clearly not on Toronto’s side — although it had plenty of time left to turn the tide. The long distance goal merely evened the score, but it also brought a stunned silence over the Air Canada Centre and left the Leafs in a fog.

Bernier soon allowed a soft goal to Martin Hanzal from an awkward angle and later surrendered a tough Sam Gagner tip-in after David Clarkson took an undisciplined roughing penalty by throwing a hit following an icing.

Yet, as the dust settled, all anyone could focus on was the unlikely tying goal.

“I didn’t see it,” said Bernier, who had stopped all 32 shots he saw beforehand. “I lost it in the stands and it just dipped in front of me.”

It’s the kind of thing that happens when a team is on an ugly 3-15-1 stretch like Toronto. Most amazingly, remember, the Leafs had gone 10-1-1 right before the season-killing nosedive.

Lest anyone get too lost in all of these numbers, interim coach Peter Horachek had the best perspective on Ekman-Larsson’s perfectly placed hole-in-one.

“Maybe (Bernier’s) not set, maybe he doesn’t see it and thinks it’s being dumped in along the wall, which is usually the case,” said Horachek. “The puck kind of went high and knuckled and dropped down. But you can’t give yourself excuses.

“You’ve got to say, ‘That’s his job and he’s got to have that,’ and I’m sure he wishes he could have it back and usually does.”

With everything seemingly going wrong, some in Toronto are hoping it stays that way. The Leafs now have a much better chance of winning the draft lottery and landing Connor McDavid (6 percent) than qualifying for the NHL playoffs (1.8 percent, according to sportsclubstats.com).

However, there’s still so much season left to play and no doubt some personnel changes to come. It wouldn’t be surprising at all to see the Leafs get red-hot again at some point over the remaining 32 games.

“You’ve got to be resilient, and you’ve got to be mentally tough,” said Horachek. “You deal with these negative things like having those couple flukey goals go in, and you’ve got to move on to the next day.”

Who knows where this goes from here?

We’ve seen just about everything already.

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