TORONTO — Craig Berube called for leadership. For a response. For a statement.
Standing in the bowels of Scotiabank Arena three nights ago, processing the 60-minute drubbing his Toronto Maple Leafs had just endured at the hands of the high-flying Edmonton Oilers, the Toronto bench boss laid out the stakes.
“Our leaders have got to take control of it, a lot more than they are right now,” Berube had said that night, after a heavy, exasperated sigh. “To me, it’s all a mindset. Whether you’re down a goal or you’re up, you’ve just got to have more urgency. Be more direct in how we want to play. We didn’t do it in the third period, two games in a row.”
The schedule offered up a gift of a rebound opportunity: a showdown with the Chicago Blackhawks, residents of the league’s basement for the past half-decade, coming to the Maple Leafs’ barn without their talisman, Connor Bedard.
It was all there for the blue-and-white to grab hold of. For captain Auston Matthews, in particular. Start strong, tilt the ice, answer the call.
But for 50 minutes Tuesday night, the home side looked miles off it. Bobbling passes, stumbling around the sheet, looking disjointed and disconnected, like they have too many times this season.
It took only 10 minutes for Chicago to wobble the hosts, a point shot through traffic deflecting off Wyatt Kaiser and past Joseph Woll, who returned to the Maple Leafs’ cage for the first time in a week-and-a-half. Five minutes later, the Hawks bagged another, pouncing on a lacklustre power-play zone-entry attempt from William Nylander, taking the puck down to the other end of the sheet on a 2-on-1, and sniping a short-handed tally past Woll.
“I thought we were a little bit stubborn in the first,” veteran defender Oliver Ekman-Larsson said of the early going. “Trying to go through five guys, turning a lot of pucks over.”
“We weren’t on our toes, and you could see that,” added winger Dakota Joshua. “They took it to us there and got the lead. … Just self-inflicted wounds. Like, we were doing it to ourselves. Too many turnovers. That can’t happen. We’ve just got to be better.”
In between the two early tallies, the visitors put another puck in the net — outbattling the Maple Leafs in their own crease and stuffing a goal past Woll, only for it to be called off after a goalie interference challenge.
As the officials reviewed the play, Berube tore into his squad on the bench. Asked about his message to the group during that disappointing first period, the coach didn’t mince words.
“It could have been a number of things,” Berube said post-game. “Giving up a short-handed goal, then giving up a face-off goal. They shouldn’t happen. They shouldn’t happen. I mean, we get outmuscled around our net.
“It’s just simple things. That’s why I was pissed off.”
As the Maple Leafs left the ice for the first intermission, the crowd rained down boos upon them.
“I mean, if I was a fan, I wouldn’t have been too happy with the performance either. So, no surprise there,” Joshua said of the hometown jeers. “No one wants to get booed in their own building. But at the same time, they had every right to feel that way with what we were putting out there.”
More boos fell to the ice midway through the third period, Toronto still trailing 2-0. And for a moment, Berube’s squad seemed perched on a crucial precipice, teetering dangerously.
-
-
32 Thoughts: The Podcast
Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.
Lose this game — against this opponent, with this type of performance, after what happened three nights ago in this building — and it seemed certain to all topple over, to shatter on the pavement. The race seemed run, the Maple Leafs faithful’s belief in this team — and, crucially, in its captain — all but evaporated.
Then Ekman-Larsson took the puck off an offensive-zone faceoff win from No. 34, took a few steps, and wired it through traffic, past netminder Spencer Knight, and into the back of the net.
And the crowd erupted.
“Going into the third, it was, ‘We need to play like the desperate team,’” Joshua said. “If we played our game, we knew that we could come back. It was a group effort, a lot of guys talking. And then after we got that first one to go, you could kind of feel it. Everyone was into it.”
A few minutes later, the captain found his moment — the type of game-swinging, momentum-building, life-giving sequence the fans in these stands have been craving for weeks.
It started with a strong forecheck from Nylander, who dashed behind the net after a lost offensive-zone faceoff, wrestled the puck from Kaiser, and got it to Matthews — No. 34 corralled the puck, wheeled around to the front of the net, and wired a crisp wrister over Knight’s shoulder.
Tie game. Crowd on its feet. Boos turned to cheers.
Before the fans could return to their seats, the Maple Leafs had found another, Troy Stecher firing a puck down the ice off the end-boards, Joshua beelining through the Hawks’ still-stunned defenders, and the winger whipping the game-winner into the cage before Chicago knew what was happening.
“That’s why you build your game throughout the game, just doing the right things — it adds up,” Ekman-Larsson said of the roller-coaster comeback. “That’s why we want to get the puck deep, to make it harder on the other defencemen, and I thought it paid off again.”
“The boo-birds were coming down — rightfully so — and I think after that first goal, the crowd really got into it, which was great,” Matthews added. “And then after the second one, the place was rocking. And after the third one, even more.”
By the time the final buzzer rang, the Maple Leafs had bagged a 3-2 victory, found a crucial comeback win and narrowly dodged disaster. And despite lengthy stretches of the night in which No. 34 looked far from the all-world scorer who once terrorized netminders around the league, the blue-and-white talisman who seemed among the best players on the planet for a lengthy spell, there’s little doubt the captain was crucial in pulling his side out of the mud in this one.
“It was great. It was great to see, and great for him, and great for our team. I thought that line drove play tonight, which was what I wanted to see,” Berube said of Matthews, Nylander and Matthew Knies. “Whether they scored or not, it’s just controlling the game more than they have, and driving play. And they did, I thought. All three of them were pretty good tonight.”
Big-picture, it’s a small step forward for these Leafs — but not necessarily a leap. Late outburst aside, the night left plenty of question marks on the table, plenty of holes in need of patching. Still, for a club that’s lacked fire, lacked fight, on so many nights in this building this season, there’s progress to be found in a late spark of belief, and what it ignited on this night.
“It’s just the momentum swings that happen every game. You’ve got to believe that you can come back,” Joshua said of what spurred the late-game-turning flurry. “That was a big two points that we needed there. It was nice to see us come together and squeeze it out.”
