TORONTO — The last time the Toronto Maple Leafs took the ice in their home barn, the fans packing the Scotiabank Arena stands let their voices be heard, offering up a chorus of boos for the former star who chose to leave this city. Sunday afternoon, in the follow-up effort, the blue-and-white faithful redirected their ire at the home team itself.
The Maple Leafs arrived at Sunday’s affair with a shot at redemption. Fresh off Friday’s lacklustre performance, Toronto got a date with a Colorado Avalanche team navigating their own struggles. The league’s top-ranked squad came to town in middling form themselves, having endured a 7-3 drubbing at the hands of the Philadelphia Flyers just a couple days ago and dropping four of their past five, including an overtime loss to these Leafs two weeks ago. It would be a stiff test, but one that offered Toronto a path back to some renewed belief amid a woeful homestand.
It took just seven-and-a-half minutes — and a pair of quick goals from Brock Nelson — for the Avalanche to snuff out that glimmer of hope.
“Honestly, I thought we came out better than we have the last couple games,” captain Auston Matthews said after the dust settled on the 4-1 Colorado win. “Then there’s just mental mistakes, times where we just shoot ourselves in the foot. And then you’re down 2-0 to the best team in the league, and you end up having to chase the game for the rest of the night.
“It’s on all of us. All of us need to be better.”
The first of the two goals came six minutes into the tilt. Jake McCabe carried the puck out of Toronto’s zone and fired a cross-ice pass to Matthews, waiting near the Avs’ blue line. Before it got to him, Cale Makar stepped in and poked the puck away. Nelson picked it up, walked into the Maple Leafs’ zone on a 2-on-1, and sniped one past Joseph Woll’s glove.
A minute later, with the Maple Leafs looking wobbly in their own zone once more, Nelson collected the puck near the corner and fired another one on Woll from the goal line, beating him again.
The Avs added a third from Jack Drury in the second period, and an empty-netter from Nelson to complete the hat trick in the third. Toronto managed to break up the shutout attempt with a Max Domi power-play tally in the final minutes of the game, but not before the fans who’d stuck around made their discontent clear.
But for head coach Craig Berube, it wasn’t just the early stretch that sunk his side; it was what happened next.
“We get down 2-0 and it kind of deflated our team,” the coach said. “We get scored on, a couple goals, and we kind of stop playing. We watch, instead of coming together as a team.”
Asked what he heard on the bench from his team in that moment and what he’s heard there of late as the Maple Leafs’ losses have begun to pile up, the coach said there’s a shift needed there, too.
“Right now, it’s quiet. That’s not going to help,” Berube said. “You’ve got to cheer for your teammate, you’ve got to have energy no matter what. That’s going to create confidence for your team.”
It’s been a central issue for these Maple Leafs this season — that confidence, that belief in their ability to pull through, the absence of the urgency needed to claw their way there. With Sunday’s loss in tow, Toronto has now dropped four straight on this homestand, getting outscored 18-8 over losses to Minnesota, Detroit, and Vegas before this one.
But unlike past seasons, where slides like this were viewed through the prism of lofty post-season dreams — as signs of process issues to iron out before the real games began — the Maple Leafs have a much more pressing situation to deal with this time.
The 0-3-1 homestand has them stalled at 57 points, tied with three other clubs — the Florida Panthers, Flyers and Washington Capitals — and just below the final Eastern Conference wild-card spot currently held by Boston, who sit five points up. Getting back into the playoff picture remains an uphill battle. And finding a way to reignite that confidence, that belief, will be crucial.
In John Tavares’s eyes, it shouldn’t be a complicated process.
“It’s just a choice,” he said. “You come in, you get focused, you prepare the way you need to prepare. You take what’s in front of you, and not focus on what’s in the past, or what’s ahead or down the line, worrying about the big picture too much — you focus on what you can do right now to get ready for our next challenge.”
His coach echoed the sentiment.
“That’s a choice. Like, they’re NHL players,” Berube said. “You’re paid to play in the NHL — you’ve got to go out and play. I played, I know the feeling. Confidence comes from hard work. Confidence comes from just playing the system, being direct. For me, confidence comes from work, and compete — if you work and compete and understand, going into a game, that is the most important part, you will get your confidence.”
His club is running out of time to test that approach. Only 30 games remain on the campaign, and Toronto faces the prospect of heading into the Olympic break still outside of a playoff spot, riding a streak of disappointment, unless they can right the ship quickly.
“We just haven’t executed as well,” Tavares said of this four-game home slide. “Two out of the first three, we just gave up too much; the puck was in our net more than you can allow to happen. And then obviously a tight game against Detroit, we just didn’t end up on the right side of it, it goes to overtime. And today we didn’t execute with the puck as well as they did.
“We just have to raise our level of play and be more consistent, whether it’s our structure, whether it’s our execution with the puck, all those things. It has to be at a high level consistently.”
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The Maple Leafs close out their homestand Tuesday with a tilt against the Buffalo Sabres — who currently sit third in the Atlantic with 63 points — before embarking on a four-game road trip to wrap up this pre-Olympic stretch.
For Berube, the focus over the next week should be clear.
“We’ve got to fix the execution part, for me. And the battle level,” he said. “When we get down in a game, we’ve got to come together as a team and we’ve got to fight through that. Because it’s going to happen, we all know that. I think losing at home here, it’s worn on our team a little bit. But that’s pro sports.
“We’ve got to all pull it together here and get ready for Tuesday. We need a win, that’s the bottom line.”
