COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Toronto Maple Leafs were two days removed from giving up 29 shots in the first period to Carolina and managed to keep the Columbus Blue Jackets to just 24 for an entire game.
It felt like progress, only the result didn’t reflect a much-improved effort.
The Leafs played a lot more offence than defence and still wound up flying home with a 4-2 loss on Friday.
“I thought we had a lot of good shifts in their end, a lot of time in their end,” said veteran defenceman Ron Hainsey. “It seemed like we had a lot of offensive zone draws so we were keeping them kind of on their half.”
They didn’t fare too well when it came the other way despite owning 60 per cent of the even-strength shot attempts.
Some of that can be chalked up to an early 2-0 deficit, marking the third straight game where they’ve fallen behind by that score. The Leafs were chasing it for the final 50 minutes and were sunk by a Cam Atkinson shorthanded goal in the second period and the insurance marker from Markus Hannikainen against the run of play.
“I thought tonight that might have been as good a road game as we’ve played in a while, to be honest with you,” said Leafs coach Mike Babcock. “I thought our guys skated good, we moved the puck. We turned the puck over on the first goal and on their fourth goal. You can’t do that, but the bottom line is we played heavy, we played fast, we did lots of good things.”
They will have to hope that carries over into Saturday night, when the Philadelphia Flyers visit Scotiabank Arena. That will be Toronto’s seventh game in a gruelling 12-day stretch.
Some of the players most responsible for a 15-8-0 start to the season didn’t make their usual impact for the Leafs.
Top defenceman Morgan Rielly was on the ice for all four goals against. Frederik Andersen, arguably the Leafs’ MVP a quarter of the way into the year, didn’t come up with a game-changing save. And the dangerous duo of Mitch Marner and John Tavares couldn’t break through on the scoresheet despite tilting the ice in a hard matchup against the Jackets’ top line and top defence pairing.
Go figure.
“The Tavares line dominated the game, obviously,” Babcock said of a night where they were above 60 per cent in attempts while facing the home team’s best players. “I thought we had everybody on board tonight. I said we had that turnover I think right away and then after that we really took control of the game and played really, really well. We didn’t score and they did.
“That’s the way it goes sometimes.”
Of course, the Leafs were probably due to lose a game like this given that they’ve stolen a couple because of an early PDO bender. Regression, or the Hockey Gods, will even things out eventually.
It was only this past Monday where they beat the Blue Jackets 4-2 despite being outplayed.
“They should have won in our building. We probably should have won here,” said Babcock.
Josh Anderson scored both of the first-period goals by Columbus — slipping behind Rielly and Jake Gardiner to bang home a rebound at 3:55 before batting a puck out of midair at 9:52.
Toronto clawed its way back when Hainsey floated a shot past Sergei Bobrovsky at 16:16 with Connor Brown and Andreas Johnsson creating traffic in front. The red-hot Kasperi Kapanen then scored from his off-wing early in the second period, giving him 10 goals already in his breakout season.
“To be honest, [in the past] I feel like before I’d probably just curl up and try to find somebody,” said Kapanen. “Now I’m just trying to shoot the puck a little more and it just seems to be finding the net.”
The Blue Jackets were opportunistic after two failed attempts on the power play thanks to minor penalties taken by Tavares in the offensive zone. Tavares was the last man back on a Leafs man advantage when Atkinson toe-dragged around him and beat Andersen shorthanded.
Then Hannikainen made it 4-2 just over three minutes into the final period, seeing Hainsey accidentally knock it into his own net after Artemi Panarin fought Rielly off on the backcheck.
“They played well. I mean, we know what to expect, we played them a week ago or so,” said Rielly. “They did a good job. They came out, they got two in the first again like they did the last game. It’s not what we wanted, but it is what it is. I thought there were points in the game where we played alright.
“Just didn’t get it done. Back at it tomorrow.”
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