TORONTO -- This was supposed to be a season that the Maple Leafs took another step forward in the playoffs. Soon enough they may contemplate a step backward instead.
Down three games to one against the Bruins in their first round series, Toronto could be dispatched from the playoffs as early as Game 5 Saturday night in Boston. After recording a franchise-high 105 points in the regular season, expectations of a long playoff run were at hand, but a loss in Game 5 would send the Maple Leafs packing even earlier than their first round loss in six games to the Washington Capitals last spring.
“Dig in and make it go your way, I think you have to enjoy part of the duress of this time of year and embrace it,” said Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock before the team traveled to Boston on Friday.
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Duress is exactly what the team is now facing. As plucky upstarts a year ago against the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Capitals, Toronto –with seven rookies in the lineup - gave them all they could handle, at one point leading the series two games to one. Though the Maple Leafs eventually lost, each of the six games was decided by one goal, five of them went to overtime.
Against the Bruins this year, the Maple Leafs lost by four goals twice and two goals once. The only game where they resembled the team that cruised comfortably through the regular season was in a 4-2 win in Game 3.
Babcock feels that his team is facing increased pressure this season compared to last year’s play-on-house-money type mindset.
“I think for sure, this is real,” he said. “You become a good team and you feel this every single spring and then you have to learn to embrace it and enjoy it.”
There is no way to Stanley Cup without that pressure. That is the lesson the Maple Leafs are learning right now. So far, they have not figured out the answers.
“Pressure means you have a chance, no pressure means you have no chance. You go to the Olympic games, you’ve got no chance for a medal, there’s no pressure,” Babcock explained. “Do you want to be that person or do you want to be under the gun? I want to be under the gun. We want to build our program so big that we’re under the gun and we’re supposed to win. We’ve got an unbelievable fan group, they expect us to be good, we want to be good, let’s be good.”
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Part of the reason why the Maple Leafs find themselves in this predicament is that their top players quite simply have not been as good as Boston’s top players. Auston Matthews and William Nylander have yet to impact the series as they intended. The pair generated the game-winning goal in Game 3, but otherwise have been held off the scoresheet and are a combined -6. Last season against the Capitals, Matthews had four goals and an assist while Nylander had a goal and three assists. They know they have not been good enough.
“We just haven’t gotten to our level, I couldn’t tell you why we haven’t been able to get to the level we can play at,” said Nylander. “I think we’re far from where we can be at. We came in and were playing really well from the beginning of that series (last year). Throughout this series, I think I’ve played one, two good games. I haven’t been able to play the way I want to play throughout most of this series.”
“Their whole defensive structure is good. They’ve done a pretty good job of keeping us off the net, making it easier for their goalie to make saves,” added Matthews. “We definitely need to be better as a line and talking with each other, our backs are against the wall, we need to be good and we’re going to be good.”
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Without more of a contribution from Matthews or Nylander, the chance of the Maple Leafs climbing back into the series is remote. But they alone are not the only Maple Leafs who have underperformed. Babcock acknowledged there seems to be a level of tightness that has crept into Toronto’s lineup.
“It’s easy to focus on the guys like Auston and Willy and stuff like that, but, to me, anybody who goes to the net can find a way to score,” said Babcock. “It doesn’t matter who scores, it matters if you have success at the end of the day so just do your individual part, make sure you’re loose and driving. You can’t play the game all tight and get out there and play.”
While two, if not three of the games, felt like the Maple Leafs were not even been competitive, the thing the team is clinging to right now is that they have yet to play their best game.
Matthews and Nylander have struggled. Goaltender Frederik Andersen, who set a franchise-record with 38 wins in a single-season this year, has not been nearly as good as he was during the regular season. Nazem Kadri, who scored over thirty goals for the second consecutive season, has not yet had a chance to positively impact the series because of a three game suspension. He will return in Game 5.
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The question now is, can they find a way to get back to the level they were at during the regular season before it’s too late?
“This the time where everybody needs to dig in, down three games to one,” said Matthews. “There’s a lot of belief in this room. We have to win on Saturday because we want to come back and play here again.”
Added Babcock, “Last night out there in Maple Leaf Square, they put that on TV and I talked about the National Anthem the other day and again last night. To me, if you’re these players, if you’re us and you’ve seen that, you want to see it again.
“The only way we get to see it again is we’ve got to win to play. We have to dig in, got to compete harder, got to play better.”