Game 2: Leafs vs. Sens

 Takeaways from Game 2: Leafs vs. Sens

Simon B

Saturday, January 16th, 2021

Expect the unexpected. That’s the North Division in a nutshell. Friday, the Leafs and Sens played their first of 9 "Battles of Ontario". On one hand, there’s the Leafs who played Wednesday night, won that game, and are heavily favored to win. On the other hand, there are the Senators, finished 30th overall last year, haven’t played in 310 days, and are everyone’s pick to finish last. So naturally, Ottawa wins by two and shows little to no signs of rust. 

Both coaches roll out 4 lines to start the game. Ottawa looks like they have a ton of energy but they’re very rusty. This is where the Leafs need to take advantage of their opponent. When they have them on their heels. Their first power play looked quite mediocre (Simmonds and Thornton were doing a good job in front of the net though) although Matt Murray had to make some solid saves.  Good pressure by the Leafs put them back on the power play. This is the type of play I think they need to show more of if they want to do well in this division: pressuring the opponents to take bad penalties. The power play has looked really good at times to start the year so becoming consistent with that along with forcing the other team into taking said penalties could make them lethal. Hyman swings for the fences and literally bats in his first of the season to put Toronto up 1-0.  Then Ottawa started to look more coordinated. With all the changes in their lineup, they looked pretty good for their first actual shifts together. Tim Stuzle (who was not a big standout in his highly anticipated first NHL game) drew a slash from Travis Dermott. The penalty kill was terrible in the season opener against Montreal and it didn’t look much better tonight. Soon after more penalty trouble, which they have not seemed to be able to control. Thornton for high sticking and another bad one for too many men gives Ottawa the 5 on 3. Thomas Chabot scores with under a minute to go. That’s the worst thing a team can do - give up a tying or go-ahead goal with less than a minute left in the period. Toronto has done this in two straight games.

At the start of the second period, it was amazing how good the Leafs looked, especially the Kerfoot line. I kept thinking “if this is how they’re gonna play the Sens from now on...sign me up!”. That kind of pressure usually leads to either a penalty or a goal and in this case, it was the latter. Kerfoot took a wrister from the point that made its way in. It was a good shot but that puck doesn’t go in without good net-front traffic that the leafs had in front of Murray. Then the turning point. They score the go-ahead goal and now the hard part, keeping the pressure on, not taking their foot off the gas. What happened? Tkachuk, Watson, and Teirney bang, bang, bang its 4-2 Sens. For the last 8 minutes of the second, the Leafs looked like a mirror image of the team that played in the bubble last summer. Sloppy turnovers everywhere you look, not converting the little chances they’re getting, taking bad penalties. Blame Frederik Andersen all you want but they had so much struggle just getting the puck out of their own zone. It was really difficult to watch. However, the Sens looked really good for a team playing their first game in 10 months. They capitalized on most of the mistakes by Toronto. Not to mention, Nick Paul looked excellent, and it’s mind-boggling how he didn’t score at least once. Jason Spezza took another bad penalty which ended a power-play really quickly. The only way the Leafs could’ve won is by returning to their early second-period form. But as I said, they were an exact copy of the way they looked last season and that means not waking up until it’s too late. This group decided to allow a goal in the process. Derek Stepan put in his first as a Senator. A major part of this self-dismantling was TJ Brodie. He just looked out of place, struggling to keep the puck inside a couple of times, and then he really struggled in his own zone. The Leafs were back on the powerplay after an Austin Watson slashing call. John Tavares ripped a shot through Matt Murray. But as predicted it was too little too late. Freddy made a few solid saves to keep his team within two but there were no real dangerous chances for the Leafs.  The Matthews line was not good enough and Joe Thornton was almost slowing his line down. At the end of the game, there were some scrapes and battles between players on both teams. The battle of Ontario is looking to be competitive and rough for the first time since before 2005. The next 8 games should be really good ones, to say the least.

    After game one, Sheldon Keefe put an emphasis on not really changing the lineup too much but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some significant changes for Saturday’s clash. For starters, (no pun intended)  Jack Campbell should make his first start of the season. Even if he has an excellent game, Andersen won’t lose his starting job that easily. After yesterday, tonight’s game should be more than excellent. If the Sens put up another really good fight, we’ll be in for a treat.

On my way out...NFL predictions for today:

- Bills over the Ravens

- Packers defeat the Rams