TORONTO — Phil Kessel shifted side to side on his feet, staring blankly at the blue carpet in front of him. His team had just been pummeled. He’d been held to just one shot in 16 minutes and 51 seconds of mostly ineffectual hockey after taking only two shots in more than 20 minutes three nights earlier. He’d been dropped onto a new line in an effort to give him a spark, he’d taken two holding penalties that his coach described as “unacceptable” and “blatant,” and now a reporter was asking him what on earth was going wrong.
He let out a deep sigh.
“I don’t know. We just haven’t got the puck very much right now. I don’t think any of us have really touched it,” Kessel said, following a 5-2 loss to a Pittsburgh Penguins team that dominated possession throughout the game. “My line in particular, again — we didn’t get s— done.”
A fair assessment following a night when Kessel’s Maple Leafs were outclassed in practically every aspect of the game. The Penguins controlled the puck, controlled the tempo and controlled the outcome, outshooting the Maple Leafs 41-25 and scoring three times with the man advantage.
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The crowd of 19,039 at Air Canada Centre certainly did not appreciate the effort and had already begun to boo the home team with a minute left in the second period. It got worse in the third when, with seven minutes left and the Penguins cruising to victory, a paying customer walked down the stairs in the Leafs end and emphatically threw his blue-and-white jersey onto the ice, walking back up the stands to cheers and high fives from fans all around.
“They’re frustrated. As are we,” said Maple Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf who played less than 20 minutes and only 12 of them at even strength as Carlyle leaned more heavily on the young tandem of Morgan Rielly and Jake Gardiner. “The bottom line is we have to be a lot better. Tonight we got beaten in all aspects of the game.”
The Penguins wasted little time Saturday night, jumping all over the Leafs in the first period at both ends and finding plenty of room to maneuver with the puck. Their first two goals — scored by Patric Hornqvist and Sidney Crosby — didn’t exhibit a particularly high degree of difficulty, as point shots bounced off the end boards and found the sticks of unchecked players hovering on either side of Maple Leafs goaltender Jonathan Bernier.
The Penguins scored a third time before the game was even 20 minutes old, capitalizing on the two-man advantage they received after Peter Holland took a tripping penalty 200 feet from his own net and Daniel Winnick committed a hold on the ensuing penalty kill. Crosby, who had three points on the night, simply threw a centring pass into the crease that bounced off the stick of Chris Kunitz and past a helpless Bernier.
“Penalties in the offensive zone are unacceptable,” Carlyle said. “Those are hooking penalties that the referee is going to call 100 percent of the time.”
The second period was better — until it wasn’t. The Leafs sustained legitimate pressure in the Penguins end and worked like plough horses on an early power play to keep the puck in the offensive zone, a persistent effort that eventually led to a goal for Joffrey Lupul. There was nothing easy about it, but for a moment it seemed the Leafs might have a fighter’s chance.
That hope slowly faded as the minutes bled off the clock and the Penguins fought their way to every loose puck. Pittsburgh forced Toronto into taking repeated offside penalties on zone entries by standing Maple Leaf attackers up at the blue line. Toronto, meanwhile, allowed the Penguins to chip pucks into the zone and win forecheck battles deep in its end.
“They were a better team pretty much in every way,” Lupul said. “No matter what system you’re playing, it’s going to come down to one-on-one battles with the opposition. And they were certainly winning a lot more of those than us.”
A too-many-men penalty 13 minutes into the second period effectively crushed any push-back the Maple Leafs had mustered; and when Evgeni Malkin scored on the ensuing power play, wiring a shot past a screened Bernier, the result of the game was all but decided.
“When the tide of the game swung so hard against our hockey club, we didn’t have much of a response,” Carlyle said. “You look to those big guys on your team to be able to grab it back for you. And right now, in these two games, they’ve had some difficulty doing that.”
Kessel would be one of those big guys. Carlyle shuffled his lines in the third period, moving Kessel onto a unit with Nazem Kadri and Lupul that had been his most consistently dangerous line all night. David Clarkson was bumped up to the first line with Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk, but the changes did little to alter the contest.
Maybe the only Maple Leaf to have a truly impressive game was the young defenceman Rielly. Still just 20 years old, Rielly was a constant source of energy, playing big minutes, quarterbacking power plays and generally making creative, enterprising plays whenever he had the puck, which is not something you’ve been able to say about a Maple Leafs defenceman in some time.
Meanwhile, Bernier — presumptively the team’s No. 1 goaltender, although Carlyle won’t even say that to his players in private — kept the game from slipping into catastrophe with solid net-minding throughout the second and third periods. He allowed five goals, but the Penguins peppered him with shots all night and found little resistance when buzzing around his crease. Pittsburgh possessed the puck for nearly 70 percent of the game and had 40 shots by halfway through the third period, which tells you one thing about how the Penguins dominated this game and another about how Bernier’s performance was likely better than it looks at face value.
Still, the Maple Leafs were bloodied on this night and now board a late flight for Manhattan where they’ll carry an 0-2 record into Madison Square Garden Sunday evening to play the Rangers. As equipment managers loaded big, blue bags of gear onto a trolley and his teammates stewed quietly behind closed doors, Kessel shuffled on his feet and looked for answers. He doesn’t know which linemates he’ll be playing with Sunday night; he doesn’t know what he has to do to spark his game. And he doesn’t know why, two games into the season, his team has completely failed to launch.
“We’re just all over the place, you know?” Kessel said. “It’s only two games in, but it’s unacceptable. We’ve gotta be better.”