Travis Green stepped to the podium after a 6-2 loss in Game 1 and was quick to point out his team was the better five-on-five club analytically.
Two days later, after another tough result for his team, the Ottawa Senators coach was again bullish about how his team had controlled play for long stretches of Game 2’s 3-2 overtime loss.
“We probably deserved a better fate tonight,” Green said, adding, “I really liked the way we played tonight.”
On one hand, you can see where he’s coming from. He’s coaching the underdogs and his young charges have had the puck a lot in this series. Ottawa has attempted 148 shots through two games to lead the NHL playoffs early on, and they’ve limited Toronto to just 45 shots while generating 61 of their own.
The Senators are ahead on basically all the underlying numbers — scoring chances, expected goals, high danger chances — but they’re behind on pucks in the net and wins on the board.
Typically, you’d call that tough luck and expect a team in that situation to break through at home in Game 3, possibly evening the series before it heads back to Toronto a week from now. And that may well happen.
But the thing is, the Leafs have done this the entire season. This is who they are. They were outshot 47 times this season — and they went 33-12-2 in those games, a 119-point pace, the best mark in the NHL in that category. They were actually better in games when they gave up more.
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