Goals and Highlights: Maple Leafs at Chicago

Acciari gets his first as a Maple Leaf and some other things happened.

Period One

McCabe flunking the eye-test again.

The captain ties it up.

Morgan Rielly with his 400th point.

Period Two

Noel Acciari with his first Leafs goal:

Score is 3-2 after two.

As you can see, Chicago came out very hard, and the Leafs did not respond until into the second period. But does that mean they’re “playing down” and getting totally outplayed? Well, you decide:

This is all-situations, showing all that extra Chicago PP magic:

Even with all that time spent hemmed in early on, that’s the Leafs massively superior offence. Defensive breakdowns and not exactly tip-top goaltending makes this look like the Leafs aren’t in the game, and the broadcast, watching the SOG clock is re-enforcing this narrative because Chicago is blocking a lot of shots.

Period Three

Morgan Rielly and Mitch Marner looked those charts over and agree.

Leafs get one off the post and then, as it does, the play roars up the other way:

Conor Timmins is not sure of himself there.

The Leafs try, so do Chicago, though, and they get the ENG.

At the time of the last goal, you can see that the Leafs opening it up to try to score had the expected effect of Chicago getting some better quality looks. You can’t defend a lead when you don’t have one.

Final score is 5-3.

Next game is Tuesday in Buffalo, and I’m sure that will be interesting.