LAS VEGAS — Brad Treliving paced up and down the T-Mobile Arena press box with a cellphone pressed to his ear as his flat-footed Toronto Maple Leafs were getting mopped 5-2 by the Vegas Golden Knights, a legitimate contender for the Stanley Cup and a real-life example of what big mid-season swings can do for a roster.
The expansion Knights weren’t a hockey team until the second season of Toronto’s Auston Matthews–Mitch Marner–William Nylander era, and they have already won 10 more post-season series than this Maple Leafs core.
“That’s a good team over there. They’re the standard of the league. And I just don’t think we really came out ready to play. Maybe we were hoping for an easy game,” captain Matthews said, following a second straight loss. “Pretty bad game overall.
“We weren’t ready to go out there and really just grind and compete against a good team that plays hard. So, yeah, I don’t know how much we can take away from this game.”
We’ll take this away: The Maple Leafs weren’t aggressive enough on the ice and, with the clock ticking down to the trade deadline, have yet to get aggressive off it either.
Jack Eichel, Tomas Hertl, Noah Hanifin, Ivan Barbashev, Brandon Saad, and Brett Howden all either scored or set up goals en route to the home side’s dominant, goalie-chasing 5-0 lead Wednesday.
Every one of those players was acquired by Vegas’s cutthroat, go-for-it-every-year front office via trade. And most of those moves were made in-season.
One by one, every Maple Leaf who wears a letter on his sweater trotted out after this lopsided loss to one of the best opponents they’ve faced in weeks and shut down any notion of travel or fatigue as an excuse.
“It was a great challenge for us, and we didn’t come close to it,” John Tavares said. “Starting with the leaders and myself, we got to do a better job of being at the level we need to be, and the level of detail execution that we have to have. Just too loose.”
“Last couple games really haven’t been great by us,” Mitch Marner added. “Hung our goalies out to dry, and we gotta be better.”
Marner and Matthews described Wednesday’s reality check as “a wake-up call.”
And with the managers of Toronto’s most serious competitors — Tampa Bay and Florida — already taking the bat off the shoulder this week, Treliving is also on high alert.
He’s pressing. We see it.
That the GM’s best and most expensive player spoke just hours earlier of his desire for a roster boost before Friday’s deadline only reinforces the pressure to respond to the Panthers’ and Lightning’s moves, limited assets be damned.
The Maple Leafs, as Elliotte Friedman reports, are one of the clubs exploring a deal for Carolina’s Mikko Rantanen. But they will only make the deal if the power forward comes with a contract extension in place. That would improve the Leafs’ leverage with pending UFA Mitch Marner.
But such a blockbuster will be pricy, particularly with the Canes wanting immediate roster help and not simply futures — and with the less-cap-restricted Panthers also rumoured to be in the mix.
The secondary options to a difference-maker like Rantanen are drying up fast, and it’s a seller’s market.
Does Treliving spend a first-round pick on a third-line pivot like Philadelphia’s Scott Laughton? Does he re-engage St. Louis’s Doug Armstrong and up his offer for Berube favourite Brayden Schenn? Is Brock Nelson even available?
Here’s a better question: If the Maple Leafs have looked flat and uninspired in recent losses to San Jose and Vegas, how will they respond Saturday in Colorado if Treliving doesn’t inject some outside life via trade over the next 36 hours?
Fox’s Fast Five
• Zach Whitecloud needed all of three seconds to learn that Matthew Knies is a southpaw.
Whitecloud, you’ll recall, knocked Knies out for a couple games with a debatable hit in November that gave the power forward a suspected concussion.
Well, Knies took a number and the two foes squared off immediately at the opening draw:
“He told us that he was going to see if he could get that, obviously, with the hit that happened last time we played them. So, he kind of gave us a heads-up,” Marner revealed.
Good on both guys — neither of whom is a frequent fighter — for settling their own score.
“I thought it was great,” Morgan Rielly said. “A great player and an important piece to what we’re doing. And a young guy making a statement like that, I thought, was powerful.”
“That’s maturity by him,” Matthews added. “Hoping to get a little bit more energy from our bench and a little more life from that. That wasn’t the case, but great job by him.”
Berube appreciated both Knies’s desire for redemption and the timing of the tilt.
“I give him a lot of credit to do that and get it out of the way early and then go play hockey,” the coach said.
• When Ilya Samsonov returned for the Leafs’ 2024 stretch run and began stacking wins, Joseph Woll lost his A game and, eventually, the starter’s gig for Game 1 of the playoffs.
Woll’s save percentage fell to .884 in March and April last season, and he’s off to an even rougher March in this one.
Woll “didn’t look like himself,” Berube said, in Sunday’s 6-5 scrambly overtime win over the Penguins.
He looked even shakier in Vegas, becoming the first goalie in the Berube era to get pulled due to poor performance.
“Just a little wake-up call to the team,” Berube explained of the switch.
“If you asked him, he probably wanted the first two goals back. The (Jack) Eichel shot is a pretty good shot — a ripper top shelf. So, I don’t know what he can do on that one.”
Woll, who did not speak post-game, gave up three goals on the game’s first seven shots and has now surrendered eight on 41 shots since his coach announced that he’d prefer to identify one goaltender at The Guy to start the post-season.
With Anthony Stolarz a safe bet to start Saturday in Colorado, the pressure falls on Woll next to rebound from a couple of tough outings next week.
“It’s not on him,” Rielly said. “It’s never one guy, which is the great thing about team sports. Moving forward, it’s on us to rally and play better for him.”
• “Relentless” is how Auston Matthews describes a hectic road schedule that sees the Maple Leafs making three long trips to the Pacific time zone between mid-January and late March. Not to mention clocking overtime at the 4 Nations Face-Off.
“Getting all of our West Coast trips in here in the last two months of the season,” Matthews quipped.
“Yeah, just been living out of the suitcase for the last month or so, but it’s been fine. Sometimes, that’s just the way it works out, I guess.”
What does Matthews miss about not being in Toronto?
“I miss my dog a lot,” the captain smiled, thinking of his mini Bernedoodle, Felix.
“It’s been tough. I haven’t been seeing him around too much for the last little while. Being at home is nice, being able to sleep in your own bed and stuff like that, but that’s just the nature of playing in the NHL.”
• Chris Tanev cannot come back soon enough.
Toronto has been forced to lean way too heavily on the likes of Philippe Myers, Conor Timmins, and Simon Benoit this week, while Rielly and Oliver Ekman-Larsson are getting tougher assignments.
Another stark reminder that this roster needs another defenceman as well as another forward within the next 36 hours.
“Very important player,” Rielly said. “There’s been times where we’ve done a good job, and obviously, there’s been times where we’ve missed him.”
• The Maple Leafs’ much-lauded video team lost a rare coach’s challenge and got dinged for a delay-of-game penalty after arguing that Tanner Pearson interfered with Stolarz while jamming home a second-period rebound.
Worth a Hail Mary, as the score was ratcheting to 5-0 and essentially putting a comeback out of reach.
“It was a 50/50,” Berube shrugged. “I thought the puck was underneath him.”
