Toronto Maple Leafs forward John Tavares chases the loose puck against Buffalo Sabres forward Jeff Skinner during the first period in Toronto on March 2.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Whether you want to call it luck, coincidence or simply bad timing, it hardly matters.
Mitch Marner dressed for the 400th game of his NHL career on Wednesday, and he took the ice surrounded by of a “sea of blue and white,” as the arena host applied an in-house touch of hyperbole with a hockey game at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena free of capacity restrictions for the first time since Dec. 11, 2021.
Given the pair of milestone moments, it’s a shame that the Toronto Maple Leafs didn’t have anything resembling a sense of occasion, with the Buffalo Sabres snapping the home side’s three-game win streak with a 5-1 victory.
That the Leafs chose this night to come out flat and uninspired, just as they did in last month’s 5-2 loss to the Montreal Canadiens or even the 7-1 loss in Pittsburgh earlier this season, left head coach Sheldon Keefe just as confounded as he had been following those earlier defeats.
“Terrible from start to finish,” was how he summed up Wednesday’s effort.
This loss, however, differed from the defeat to the Canadiens, he added.
“Montreal, there’s no attention to detail, odd-man rushes and breakaways, two-on-ones and all that,” he said. “That’s not what was going on in the game today. It was just no real urgency, no real competitiveness.”
Toronto Maple Leafs forward Nicholas Robertson stick checks Buffalo Sabres forward Peyton Krebs during the first period.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Given the alarming frequency of nights when this Leafs team comes out flat, it’s becoming harder for the players to decide whether they are presenting learning moments, ripe with opportunity to improve, or whether they should just be left in the rear-view mirror.
“It’s always a battle trying to decide which ones to flush and which ones you try to flip the table about and try to spark something, but I guess we’ll wait and see,” said Morgan Rielly. “I mean, obviously, it’s not the effort that we expected. It’s not the effort that is our standard and we expect better.”
Rielly’s defence partner, Rasmus Sandin, embodied the team’s Jekyll-and-Hyde style of play of late. With Timothy Liljegren rested, the left-shooting 21-year-old was promoted to playing on the right of the top pairing alongside Rielly.
On the plus side, Sandin scored the Leafs’ tying goal with his fourth of the season 11:48 into the first period. However, his evening quickly took a turn for the worse, with the Swede on the ice for three goals against, inadvertently making critical assists to both of Buffalo’s second-period goals that went a long way to take the game away from Toronto. Keefe said the pairing of Sandin and Rielly is “probably not” something that he will be going back to.
Despite his youth and lack of NHL experience, Sandin was able to put a decisive finger on Toronto’s woes this night, having watched the team do all the right things to beat a good Washington Capitals team on Monday night.
“We were really prepared playing against Washington and coming in against Buffalo, no disrespect or anything, but I think that’s a team that we should we should beat,” he said. “And I think we just weren’t prepared and [that’s] something we need to get better at.”
The defeat leaves the Leafs third in the Atlantic Division, a point back of Florida and two back of Tampa Bay. Given the circumstances, the lone bright spot on the night may well have been Marner, who registered an assist on his team’s goal to push his point streak to five games.
With nine goals, 14 assists and 23 points in his past 12 games entering Wednesday, 2015′s fourth overall pick led the NHL in each of those categories for February, and was honoured as the NHL’s player of the month on Tuesday. Not that Marner is any way fixated on numbers, apparently.
“It’s tonight? I thought it was next game,” Marner said when asked about the milestone appearance after the morning skate. “There we go. That’s cool. Hopefully I can keep tallying that up for a couple more hundred. It’s definitely a cool milestone to hit and all with the team I grew up watching. It’s a pretty cool thing to be a part of.”
The 17,122 on hand certainly seemed happy to be part of a live Scotiabank Arena crowd once more, if the beaming smiles on many of their maskless faces could be taken as proof. It took less than 30 seconds for the first familiar refrains of “Go Leafs Go” to break out, and a minute more for a chorus of boos to ring around the stands as Alex Kerfoot was sent to the penalty box for tripping with the first penalty of the night.
The home crowd had even more cause for complaint 55 seconds later, when a point shot from Jacob Bryson deflected off Rielly and past Petr Mrazek, making back-to-back starts for the first time this season.
But just a few days removed from its 15-point salvo in Detroit during the 10-7 win over the Red Wings, the Leafs’ top trio continued its own impression of the famed Production Line. Marner fed rookie Michael Bunting, who teed up Sandin to beat Craig Anderson for the tying goal at the 11:48 mark. With his seventh point in his past three games, Bunting kept in touch at the top of the rookie scoring race, moving one point back of Detroit’s Lucas Raymond in first place.
Despite the 34-point disparity between the teams entering play, the Sabres looked strong, looking to snap a six-game losing streak. Playing their first game in Toronto since Dec. 17, 2019, Buffalo took control of the game in the second period.
A shot from Rasmus Asplund bounced off of Sandin, who had been outmuscled by Victor Olofsson, with the latter picking up the rebound for an easy tap-in 12:19 into the period. That lead was doubled just over six minutes later when Sandin miscontrolled the puck, allowing Jeff Skinner to poke it through to Tage Thompson, who buried it over the glove hand of Mrazek.
Skinner sprinkled more salt in the home side’s wounds in the third period, beating Mrazek on a breakaway for his 21st goal of the season. Kyle Okposo wrapped up the scoring with just over eight minutes to play.
Mrazek, bidding to win a third successive game, gave up five goals on 31 shots, while Anderson let in just one of the 30 pucks fired his way. Mrazek left the ice to a chorus of Bronx cheers, although the first-year Leaf said he could understand their frustration.
“Yeah, obviously, we have a full building for the first time in two or three months so obviously they want us to play good to win the game and that wasn’t the wasn’t the result [they wanted] tonight,” he said.
These two teams are to face each other at the Heritage Classic at Hamilton’s Tim Hortons Field on March 13. But the Leafs have four games before they turn their attention to that showpiece event, starting Saturday when they play host to the Vancouver Canucks.