Having lost every playoff series against the Boston Bruins since 1959, the Toronto Maple Leafs were no doubt hoping for a better start to their 17th post-season meeting.
It didn’t happen.
Handing the Bruins five power plays throughout the night, the Maple Leafs effectively shot themselves in the foot in a 5-1 loss on Saturday.
Post-game, head coach Sheldon Keefe was not happy with the lack of discipline from his roster and called out out top-six winger Max Domi for his second-period slashing penalty against Brad Marchand, which led to a Bruins goal.
“The careless penalties, Domi’s penalty, obviously that’s one I would call an undisciplined penalty. I understand what he’s trying to do, but he crossed the line there. Can’t do that. But then just the high sticks, stuff like that, that’s just careless. I don’t know if that [has]anything to do with the emotion or anything like that.”
Despite the five penalties his team took, Keefe did say he had no issue with the team’s competitiveness and emotion throughout the game.
The Bruins scored on two of the five power plays, including Jake DeBrusk’s second of the game, which came after Auston Matthews took a high-sticking penalty in the offensive zone.
“Too many penalties,” Matthews told reporters. “You give a team like that opportunities on the man-advantage, obviously that many, they’re going to capitalize.
“They obviously executed on the mistakes we made.”
The Maple Leafs, on the other hand, were on the man-advantage three times and were stifled each time.
The Maple Leafs and Bruins meet again for Game 2 on Monday at TD Garden in Boston.
