Season on the line, playing at home on Saturday night and with one of their stars making his series debut: If there was ever a time for the Toronto Maple Leafs to change the narrative about them being playoff underachievers, Game 4 was it.
Instead, the Leafs put up one of their most embarrassing efforts in recent memory in a 3-1 loss that deserved the boos that rained down in Scotiabank Arena.
This was a game the Leafs had to win and very few players up and down the lineup played like it. Yes, this Leafs team has had some stinkers in the playoffs in the past eight years. But given everything at stake in Game 4, their performance was arguably the most terrible of that stretch. They return to Boston on Tuesday trailing the series 3-1.
It wasn’t as if the Bruins piled on the Leafs either. They scored their first three goals on their first 18 shots. And this wasn’t necessarily a case of Ilya Samsonov not making the saves he had to. The Bruins were simply able to capitalize on their chances in a way the Leafs have struggled to all series long.
The third period saw some dramatic changes with Auston Matthews not returning to the ice after battling an illness and Joseph Woll replacing Samsonov in goal. Samsonov had allowed three goals on 17 shots.
But it’s not the changes that Leafs fans may end up remembering from Game 4. It’s how, from top to bottom, this Leafs team showed their true colours and wasn’t nearly good enough when it needed to be.
Auston Matthews leaves game and does not return
After missing the Leafs’ last practice and the morning skate ahead of Game 3 with illness, Matthews did not return to the ice on Saturday after the second intermission.
Matthews was a one-man wrecking crew in Game 2, putting up one of his best playoff performances as a Leaf with a game-winning goal and two assists.
But in Games 3 and 4, he was hardly as effective and dangerous in the offensive zone. Even without knowing much about the illness, it feels fair to assume Matthews hasn’t been operating at 100 percent based on how he looked through the first two periods of Game 4.
When the Leafs announced Matthews would not return for the third period, they did not offer any explanation.
Yet when they did, it felt like the dagger that was sinking into the heart of the team finally hit its deepest point.
With William Nylander back, Leafs still can’t score enough
The Leafs came into Game 4 tied for the lowest goals per game (2.00) in the playoffs so far. Getting William Nylander, who scored a career-high 98 points this regular season, back in the lineup was supposed to help the Leafs create offence.
It did not.
The Leafs’ offence looked destitute in a game that mattered more than any other in the season. And their highly-paid stars’ lack of response means they deserve every question and every bit of criticism that will undoubtedly come their way in the coming days. John Tavares was beat off the puck far too often. Through two periods, Mitch Marner looked like a shell of the player who had danced his way through past playoff opponents. Yes, Marner’s third-period goal was electric. But it also felt like too little, too late.
The fact that that line was given difficult matchups shouldn’t give them a pass either. They were lacking inspiration, creativity and straight-up execution with the puck.
But they weren’t alone.
Nearly every one of the team’s offence-minded players came out looking equal parts tight and passive in Game 4.
The Leafs have now scored more than two goals just once in their past 11 playoff games.
It was the Leafs’ high-octane offence that was supposed to get them over the hump against the Bruins. That was a weapon they had in their arsenal that the Bruins didn’t.
Instead, the poor performances up and down the lineup made you wonder if some Leafs might have played their last playoff game in Toronto.
Bad penalty sinks Leafs again
There was no necessity whatsoever in Max Domi laying a cross-check on David Pastrnak in a scrum in their own zone in a one-goal game. Why do it when Domi and the Leafs have seen what bad penalties can lead to? Why give a power play that came into this game firing at a 50 percent clip a chance to whip the puck around?
Domi to the box for cross-checking pic.twitter.com/dMHQHBTnjx
— Omar (@TicTacTOmar) April 28, 2024
It would be worth questioning the penalty that Domi took considering Brad Marchand scored his third goal of this series on the ensuing power play regardless. But the fact that the Leafs took their fair share of just straight-up bad penalties early in the series already? That moves the penalty and Marchand’s power-play goal from frustrating to maddening territory.
The Bruins power play finished the game at one-for-three. The Leafs’ power play came up without a goal, again, despite three opportunities. They now have one goal in 14 power play opportunities in the series.
When it comes to the Leafs special teams sinking them this series, no one is trying to force a narrative here. At 5-on-5, the Leafs were arguably the better team coming into Game 4. But it felt like poor special teams – evidenced by how the Leafs essentially gifted Marchand a power-play goal – aren’t just sinking the Leafs, but now find them hanging with the wreck of the Titanic on the ocean floor.
Ryan Reaves giveaway highlights questionable lineup choices
The Leafs fourth line had found a strong identity through Games 1 to 3 and did well to bring energy and forecheck in the Bruins zone.
Even though Nick Robertson deserved to stay in the lineup with Nylander making his series debut, wedging him into the fourth line and bringing Connor Dewar out of the lineup felt like a questionable move, at best, from Sheldon Keefe. Robertson then had little playmaking around him, which he needs as a shooter, and the fourth line didn’t have the same pop without Dewar. All of this was brought to life when Ryan Reaves didn’t move nearly quick enough to a loose puck along the boards in the first period. The Bruins forced a turnover and James van Riemsdyk gave the Bruins yet another lead in the series.
And on the back end, TJ Brodie came into the lineup for his series debut and was on the ice for two of the first three goals against. Look, who knows how Timothy Liljegren – who was taken out of the lineup – would have performed in Game 4. But Keefe could have seen a mile away that the Leafs needed offence and taking one of the Leafs few puck-moving blueliners out of the lineup struck as an odd choice. When Brodie was late to a loose puck in his own zone with less than a minute left in the second period, and Marchand won a quick battle for the puck and scored? Keefe’s decisions felt less like questionable ones and more like costly ones.
Frustration boils over for Leafs
Even as the Scotiabank Arena crowd let their frustrations over the team’s play known in the second period, they didn’t hit the levels of anger evident on the Leafs bench as the game got away from them.
Matthews gave Marner and others an earful. Nylander voiced his own profanity-laced frustrations out at no one in particular. Marner threw his gloves off as emotions boiled over.
good
now channel that frustration and score some goals already pic.twitter.com/fYw3CpogzQ
— Omar (@TicTacTOmar) April 28, 2024
If only some of the Leafs frustration was channeled into their play on the ice, perhaps the result could have been different.
(Photo: Nick Turchiaro / USA Today)
