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Maple Leafs post Pyrrhic victory in shootout victory over last-place Canucks
Ice Hockey

Maple Leafs post Pyrrhic victory in shootout victory over last-place Canucks

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It’s not exactly ‘damned if you, damned if you don’t’ territory for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but few can be happy with the outcome of Saturday’s game. Toronto emerged with a 3-2 win over last-ranked Vancouver Canucks in a shootout, in which Auston Matthews and William Nylander defeated Nikita Tolopilo in the skills competition. Considering the fact that the Maple Leafs had a 2.6 percent chance of making the playoffs before Saturday’s start, combined with the fact that the Canucks were clearly looking forward to this summer’s draft, it was a pyrrhic victory.
After losing six games in a row, Saturday’s win may provide a morale boost for the Maple Leafs with two games remaining before the Olympic break. There are 27 games remaining and the Maple Leafs are now looking to act as real sellers at the deadline for the first time in the Matthews era, as confirmed by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman during Saturday’s broadcast.
We’re not trying to be pessimistic, but it’s hard to spin Saturday’s win either way. If you’re a firm believer that the Maple Leafs should aim for a bottom-five finish in hopes of regaining their first-round pick from the Boston Bruins, taking two points won’t help the cause anyway. That’s an impossible sell to a professional athlete, so if you’re in the camp still hoping the Leafs win regardless of the intended mid- and long-term planning, a shootout win over the Canucks isn’t satisfying. They are perhaps the only team in the NHL that the Maple Leafs should beat based on their superior talent level, and that seemed to be the case on Saturday night.
Toronto’s porous defense continued to surrender several strange attacks. Morgan Rielly, who suffered an upper-body injury and did not return for the third period, again gave the opponent far too much space by squeezing aggressively and not accounting for the Canucks flooding off the rush. Rielly has been on the ice with a league-worst 63 goals 5-on-5, but the Maple Leafs also don’t have an immediate answer as an upgrade for their longest-tenured player. We’re not going to criticize injured players, but Rielly’s performance so far has been decent, and now the Maple Leafs will have to wait and see how serious the ailment is.

Making his season debut, Marshall Rifai struggled, making several key mistakes with the puck. Rifai should have been in the lineup long ago, and now it’s up to Craig Berube to see how he experiments with the line combinations, perhaps with an eye to the future, as the Maple Leafs begin a seemingly impossible climb.

The captain puts an end to the firefight!!! 🎥: Sportnet | NHL

Toronto outscored Vancouver 41-30 and controlled just under 66 percent of expected goals at 5-on-5. If this happened earlier in the season, or if it came against a better opponent, there would be plenty to celebrate in this room. And while the Maple Leafs aren’t looking at the scoreboard, we are on their behalf. Toronto is eight points out of a playoff spot and barely did enough to beat a lottery team from Vancouver with plenty of national attention. We no longer count moral victories, and Toronto pulled off a pyrrhic victory on Saturday while snapping a six-game losing streak that may only change morale going into the Olympic break.

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