GLENDALE, Ariz. — Mark this one down and remember it.
Or, in the case of the Toronto Maple Leafs, try to forget it as soon as possible.
There were certainly two points here for the taking if the visitors hadn’t left their sea legs on the plane during a cross-continent flight to the desert. Consider the larger picture being painted around Tuesday’s game: Arizona, the NHL’s most porous defensive outfit over the first month, had just returned home after a disappointing swing through the Eastern Conference.
They were, by the admission of their own general manager, a “fragile” team.
“Going into this year, we built our (motto) around ‘chemistry, character, compete, defend’ and we haven’t been doing much of any of that,” Coyotes general manager Don Maloney told me about 90 minutes before puck drop. “We’re all concerned with where we’re at right now.”
Concern didn’t really start to register for the Leafs until the eight-minute mark. That’s when they turned a 5-on-3 power play into a comedy of errors and started seeing this golden opportunity slip away.
Cody Franson fell not once, but twice, while trying to hold the blue-line. The puck skipped around the soft ice after a 25-degree day. Toronto squandered 66 seconds of the two-man advantage and didn’t so much have a good scoring chance to show for it.
“It’s hard to fathom that we were so inept with it at that time,” Leafs coach Randy Carlyle said of the early power play. “We couldn’t make two passes and we had one player fall down twice on it.
“Those are the things that you’re going ‘Holy jeez what’s going on out there?”
The mental edge shifted quickly. The fragile Coyotes could have been broken by falling into an early deficit, but instead mounted a push when they escaped without injury.
Lauri Korpikoski stole the puck from Jake Gardiner behind the Leafs net and found Sam Gagner in front to make it 1-0. Then Martin Erat banked a shot in off Stephane Robidas at the end of a chaotic sequence and Antoine Vermette caught James Reimer swimming to bump the lead to 3-0.
It was approaching the midway point of the game and Toronto had just four shots on goal to show for its effort.
“Turtle start,” said Carlyle. “It was slower than slow. No explanation for that.”
Perhaps the best explanation was simply karma. The Leafs narrowly escaped Saturday’s win over Chicago after allowing 26 shots in the third period, so this result might have evened things up in the hockey universe.
However, that won’t really do for members of the organization.
Surely everyone must see this stretch of schedule for what it is: Soft.
Toronto has had a solid run of home games to this point and even had two off days to get ready for a mini road trip. Now they’ll be put through a gauntlet of five games in nine days, very few of which will be as winnable as this one.
“They were sharper,” said Leafs winger James van Riemsdyk. “They played their gameplan more effectively. We were a little bit too loose with the puck and loose in our systems.”
There was a predictable push in the second half of the game that might have produced a tying goal had Mike Smith not been in the zone. The Coyotes starter has struggled early on this season, but looked like his old self when Phil Kessel danced into the slot late in the third period and he calmly turned him away.
Time eventually ran out on Toronto’s comeback.
Over the course of any season every team will experience losses that they can quickly make peace with. For the Leafs, this was not one of those occasions.
“It’s unacceptable,” said Phaneuf.
“That’s a game that we’re going to wish we could have back,” added Franson.
They can only hope that time doesn’t prove him right.