Get Even More Visitors To Your Blog, Upgrade To A Business Listing >>

I SAID I WAS READY TO BE HURT AGAIN...

 And so, once again, a team with seemingly more than enough talent on it has been eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs without winning a round.

There are two types of Leaf fan, I have found. There's the one sort, very loud right now, yelling that we need to blow this up and start over from picks. "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results", and all that. I can see why someone might feel that way, but I belong to the other class of fan, a small minority that echoes our first line center, Auston Matthews, in saying hockey is a game of inches, that blowing up this kind of talented core will catapult us right back to 2014. Or 1986. That seems to be the earnest wish of many this morning: a team that, instead of never getting past the first round of the playoffs, never reaches the playoffs at all. 

 Due to the vagaries of the playoff seeding format, our reward for our best regular season record in franchise history was this date with the back to back Cup winners. They showed, particularly last night, why that is, and where the naysayers really do have a point. I can sum it up in one stat. 

BLOCKED SHOTS; TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING 26, Toronto Maple Leafs 13

For non-hockey fans, the stat we put up -- 13 blocks -- is really impressive for a game. Hockey games tend to average between 25 and 35 shots on goal per game for each team. This is the biggest reason I watch hockey and not soccer. In soccer, you can go entire games without a shot on net. Being as scoring goals is the entire point of both sports, I submit soccer's doing it all wrong. 

Anyway. Getting your ass or your face in front of one of those pucks moving, potentially, close to a hundred miles an hour is not pleasant. But it's a vital skill in defensive hockey. If you block the shot, your goalie doesn't have to make the save. If your goalie doesn't have to make the save at all, the chances of him not making that save are zero. 

Twenty six blocks is insane. That means the Leafs directed more than 57 shots at the net (I'm not counting the ones that simply missed). That's nearly one shot attempt per minute of game play. Don't tell me they didn't try this time. They tried hard.

But in the end they fell short again because of the philosophy behind the respective teams' construction. 

Tampa, as I said, are the back to back repeating Cup champs, going for a threepeat that hasn't been seen in the NHL since the Islander dynasty. They lost several good players of their roster last offseason: the curse of good teams, you can't afford everybody. So what do they do? Scout their opposition and pluck their best role players for their next Cup run.

Your stars do win playoff series, of course. But when teams are as evenly matched as Tampa and Toronto -- and looking at the series holistically, they were VERY evenly matched -- it's more often than not your unheralded third and fourth liners who make the difference. These aren't the most talented guys on the squad, but they (a) work their asses off to compensate and (b) are more used to playing through the clutch and grab bullshit that dominates playoff hockey when the whistles are put away. Last night, Nick Paul scored both of Tampa's goals. I didn't know who Nick Paul was before this series started. I sure as hell know and respect the guy now. If we had just one of him, we'd have added seven blocks to our total last night. And if my grandma had wheels she'd be a bus. 

Toronto's game is built entirely on puck possession. The idea is, if you have the puck, your opponent doesn't, and if your opponent doesn't, the only way it ends up in the back of your net is something truly mortifying. Sound reasoning, and it works very well in the regular season. It leads most nights to you crushing your opponent in the faceoff circle (starting with the puck means...your team has the puck!) and on the shot clock (if you have the puck, your team is the one shooting it!) More often than not this leads to more goals than your opponent...which is the whole point. 

You negate that strategy by blocking the fuck out of anything headed towards your net. You'll have to do it a lot, but against these Toronto Maple Leafs, you'll frustrate them to no end doing it. They'll try to make cutesy plays through your dense screens and you'll pick off every puck, moving most out of danger and even taking some back the other way.

A word about officiating. 

One of the many reasons Leaf fans are mocked around the league is because when the Leafs lose, many of us blame the refs. The thing is, for whatever reason, sometimes it's not paranoia. Sometimes they're really out to get you. And it has seemed that way many many times for the Leafs this season and playoff. Our players get outright mugged without a call, but we breathe on somebody wrong and into the sin bin we go. What's even more frustrating is the inconsistency.

All I ever ask of officials is that they call the game by the rules. I think that's literally their job description. But to a man, they're into "game management" instead. Don't give one side too many penalties, that means you're biased. "But what if that team is committing all the infractions?" "No, they're not, look harder. See that guy there with the face? You don't like that face, that's a penalty. Two minutes for I don't like your face." There, now you're not biased anymore!

Last night our captain, John Tavares, scored a pretty goal to tie the game at ones. The goal was disallowed because the whistle had gone before the puck entered the net; the reason the whistle went was because Justin Holl ran a perfect pick to allow Tavares to get that shot. In hockey, that's an interference penalty. I'm not disputing that. At all. That goal had to be waved off and Holl deserved the penalty.

That exact play happens five or six times a game. That's the only time all series I've seen it called.

In the game before, there were numerous offences against our players, some of them egregious, that drew shrugs from the stripes. And to be honest we got away with a couple of dirty hits ourselves that should have been penalties -- one of them was a borderline major that went entirely uncalled. 

The Leafs are built for regular season hockey. But again and again and again they wilt when the rubber meets the stick. 

I feel most terrible for Jason Spezza, whose career is likely over. He has BLED blue and white since the minute he got here looking for the Cup that has eluded his otherwise stellar career. I hope he stays. We need him.

There are people demanding we trade everybody but Matthews. Classic Leaf fan knee-jerk. If you trade Mitch Marner, (a) he will eat you alive every time you play him for the rest of his career; (b) you won't get like value back; (c) Matthews will walk at the end of his contract. Nylander I can see going. Tavares, who is a good player still but not worth his pay rate...I hope there's an exit strategy on that signing. 

People hate Justin Holl this year, and like many Leafs he has made occasionally boneheaded errors, but overall he's been much better than the haters think. Both my eye test and the fancy stats back me up on that. Our defense does need some tweaking, though. Lyabushkin is a liability and Muzzin isn't getting any younger (Gio's even older, but he still seems to have game). 

The other area of concern is the fourth line. We've been searching for that fourth line for years now and every season I think we've found it only to be proven wrong. Our fourth line this year barely played. Tampa's played a lot more.

After last year's debacle against the Canadiens -- when we really didn't seem to bother to try for a majority of the games, expecting the series to be handed to us by default -- I was angry. This year I'm just sad. Here comes another year of endless taunting and abuse (what people get out of that, I'll never learn). I'm trying very hard to stay out of all comment sections (not always successfully) just because the atmosphere in there is poison. I'm watching as we fritter away the primes of some of the best players ever to don the Blue and White, and every fan of every other team blames ME, personally, for this. It gets old. It gets REALLY old. 

Congratulations Tampa.

Go, Blue Jays, go. 






This post first appeared on The Breadbin, please read the originial post: here

Share the post

I SAID I WAS READY TO BE HURT AGAIN...

×

Subscribe to The Breadbin

Get updates delivered right to your inbox!

Thank you for your subscription

×