Mirtle: Where and how the Maple Leafs need to be better to win Game 5

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If you had asked any Maple Leafs players, staff members or fans four weeks ago, they would gladly take Toronto being in this situation right now.

They won the division and possess a 3-1 lead over the underdog Ottawa Senators in the first round. They’re healthy and they also have Game 5 at home, where they can pull off an early elimination and get nearly a week of rest as they await whoever from the AHL rosters is left standing from the war of attrition that is the Battle of Florida.

So, yes, this column is a bit nitpicky. In general, Toronto is in a good spot. But when you’re the Leafs, and you’ve won only one of a dozen elimination games in recent memory, some nits are going to get picked.

The Leafs did some good things in Game 4, especially when it came to limiting the Senators’ attack to just four shots on goal in the second and third periods. But they also did some bad things — things they can correct in order to wind up the series on Tuesday night at Scotiabank Arena.

Let’s dig into those, one by one.

A truly terrible start

I felt like an awful lot of the commentary after Saturday’s 4-3 overtime loss focused on how much the Leafs shut down Ottawa late in the game. But the reality was they sort of had to because of how brutal they were in the first period.

Toronto did not start on time and did not show much killer instinct, two well-worn phrases from previous seasons. They conceded the first two goals — one on the power play and one short-handed — in the game’s first 14 minutes.

John Tavares got them back to 2-1 by the end of the frame, but the damage was there. Scoring chances were 14-3 for Ottawa in the first 20 minutes and high-danger chances were 9-1, making it one of the most lopsided periods for anybody in this series.

The Leafs ended up tying the game in the second on a terrific individual effort from Matthew Knies, but you’re going to have a hard time winning games when you spot the opposition a 2-0 lead. Toronto has played well with early leads all season, too, putting up some of the NHL’s best records when leading after the first and second periods. And Ottawa has really struggled to win games when it starts behind.

Getting a good start will be vital for winning Game 5, especially at home, where the fans are known to nervously sit on their hands when trailing games.

Power play powered out

Again, the man advantage has been so good in this series — converting at 56 percent over the first three games — that it’s hard to blame it for one mediocre game. But the PP was so particularly ineffective at one key moment that I think it deserves a mention.

The four-minute power play in overtime was the worst of their night, as with Tavares back in the dressing room after getting hit in the head, Craig Berube subbed Morgan Rielly back onto PP1, probably at least partly because he didn’t want them to be defenceman-less after giving up a shortie earlier in the game.

The results felt like we’d been hot tub time machined back to mid-December, when the top unit couldn’t buy a goal and Marc Savard’s name was being taken in vain on social media every game.

But a lesson was learned: No matter who isn’t available, leave Mitch Marner as the PP QB. And unfortunately, at this point, Rielly is never the answer on the man advantage.

The Leafs had 7:19 of PP time compared to just 2:23 for Ottawa in Game 4, but they were outscored 1-0. While Toronto generated eight of its 13 high-danger chances in the game on the power play, it looked far more tentative and ineffective than in the series’ first three games.

“There were some opportunities where we could’ve finished on the power play,” Berube said. “We had a couple of good opportunities. On the four-minute power play, we could’ve generated more off of it and been a little more direct on our PP in that situation.”

It was obvious that the Senators were going to adjust after getting crushed on the PK to open the series; now it’s up to the Leafs to adapt and convert again on their five-on-four opportunities.

William Nylander has acquitted himself well, but his fellow stars must match his performance. (Marc DesRosiers / Imagn Images)

Superstars need to break through

I thought Tavares, ageless wonder, had one of his best nights in the playoffs on Saturday before he left the game.

William Nylander was effective, too, especially in providing the primary assist on the Leafs’ first and third goals, including a brilliant cross-ice saucer to countryman Oliver Ekman-Larsson to send the game to OT with five minutes left in the third. Nylander also led the Leafs with six shots on goal, giving him 12 in the series.

But it was too quiet a night for Auston Matthews and Marner, who had a starring role in Sportsnet’s in-game graphics display that highlighted their non-production in previous elimination games.

The line was fine territorially, controlling play reasonably well against the Senators’ checkers, but other than Knies making something happen on his own, they didn’t do damage on the scoresheet.

Marner had six points in the series’ first three games and Matthews had five — and hey, that’s great. Gold star. But we’ve seen them deliver in early-series games in the past. They’re going to be judged on their ability to find a way to send their team through to the next round, and it didn’t happen on Saturday.

And while it’s great that the Leafs’ secondary scoring has picked up the mail, M&M are going to need more than one goal apiece to get Toronto to Round 2.

Bobby McMann and his linemates particularly struggled in Game 4. (Marc DesRosiers / Imagn Images)

The fourth line is a problem

I think we can stop calling Max Domi’s line the third line at this point. The past two games in Ottawa, Scott Laughton has been playing more at even strength (14:15) than Domi (13:49), for obvious reasons, so we’ll upgrade the lovable stonehands slash defensive plugger crew to the third line.

Even if Max Pacioretty, Domi and Bobby McMann are considered the fourth line, however, they’re not giving Toronto enough in those minutes. Domi was the overtime hero in Game 2, but that is his only point of the series. Pacioretty came close to scoring in Game 4, but otherwise struggled with the pace of play, and Bobby McMann has just one assist in the series after scoring 20 goals this season.

More glaringly, they were completely caved in defensively in the limited minutes they played together.

How bad was it? Before the line was broken up, Pacioretty-Domi-McMann spent just 6:32 together at five-on-five. In that time, a little more than 10 percent of regulation, they allowed a whopping 1.27 expected goals against. Given Toronto only allowed 2.56 expected goals against in the entire game, that means that a whopping 50 percent of the xG the Senators generated was against that one line.

That’s hard to do.

Part of what was happening was Senators coach Travis Green had last change in Kanata and was throwing some of his best players out against Domi, with Tim Stutzle and Drake Batherson, for example, facing him head-to-head for more than four minutes and generating about 90 percent of the expected goals and 100 percent of the scoring chances.

That level of mismatch won’t happen to that extent at home, but the lines were far more effective with McMann up with Tavares and Pontus Holmberg coming to help Domi out defensively.

I suspect that’s what we’ll see in Game 5 — and don’t be surprised if Pacioretty comes out for Nick Robertson or David Kämpf, too. They’ll likely need all three of them if they’re going to go deep in the playoffs, but Pacioretty probably isn’t going to be able to play every second night after missing so much time in the second half.

More from Morgan

I already mentioned Rielly in the power play section, and on the whole, he’s had a good stretch of games, including the first three of this series. He’s scored key goals against the Senators and looks far more like Playoff Rielly than during the first 50-odd games of the year. But Game 4 was a miss all-around.

Because the Leafs were down early and often, Berube started giving Rielly some shifts with OEL in the offensive zone to try and generate more offence. But Toronto was beaten up badly in those minutes, conceding six scoring chances, four of which were high-danger opportunities.

Unsurprisingly, most of those were with the aforementioned fourth line out there, which is probably a five-man combination the coaching staff should look to avoid going forward.

Rielly with Brandon Carlo has been a winning combination, however. It might make sense to keep him stapled to the enormous Coloradan at this point.

The big man in goal

Anthony Stolarz is one Leaf I’m reluctant to give much blame to given he’s been one of the difference-makers in the series (and season). But he did allow four in Game 4 despite Ottawa not having many quality looks after the first period.

While you can’t expect even the best NHL netminder to stop everything — including the breakaways, deflection passes and seeing-eye point shots Stolarz faced in that game — one more save could have been the difference.

Game 4 was Stolarz’s 38th appearance of the season, the most games he’s played since he had 39 with the San Diego Gulls in the AHL five years ago. You have to go all the way back to 2015-16, when he was just 22 years old, to find a year with a heavier workload.

Yet another reason to want to get this series over with sooner rather than later. We don’t need any more pebbles showing up.

(Top photo of Drake Batherson and Anthony Stolarz: Marc DesRosiers / Imagn Images)

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