Bruce Cassidy said earlier this week that he thought his team had been pretty good defensively this season and hadn't given up a lot of great chances. He was right, and a lot of numbers bore that out. The Bruins entered Saturday first in the NHL in expected goals against, for instance.
None of that was true Saturday night, though. The Boston defense got a rude awakening courtesy of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who romped to a 5-2 win on a night when they could get to the Bruins net seemingly whenever they wanted.
Perhaps the Bruins were expecting to see the Maple Leafs who got off to a slow start this season and not the ones who have caught fire over the last week (Saturday was their fifth straight win). Either way, they didn't look ready to battle and defend the front of their net against a team that generally does a very good job getting to dangerous areas (at least in the regular season).
This wasn't really a matter of the Bruins being overwhelmed by the Maple Leafs' skill or speed. This was more about just getting straight-up outworked.
Take Toronto's second goal, for instance. It came on a Leafs power play, which is always dangerous, but the Bruins had chances to make a play and didn't. Derek Forbort got his stick on a pass that was floated to the front, but instead of either settling the puck and making a play or emphatically whacking it away, he just weakly poke-checked it with one hand right to Mitch Marner. Marner then flipped a pass to Auston Matthews, whom Brad Marchand had lost track of, for the goal. Marchand was also late to pick up Marner on the Leafs' first goal, making for a rare poor defensive night for him.
"One hand on the stick, defenseman, you just can't do that," Cassidy said. "You have to be hard in those areas. … You can't clear pucks with one hand on your stick, so that's on us."
Toronto's fourth goal was probably even worse for the Bruins defense. John Tavares exited the penalty box and proceeded to single-handedly destroy Matt Grzelcyk and Mike Reilly, who had been paired together on the power play. First Tavares stepped around a rather soft reverse hit attempt from Grzelcyk and easily gained control of the puck in the corner. Then he completely out-muscled Reilly in front of the net, gaining inside position and burying a rebound.
"We just get outworked right in front of our goaltender by Tavares," Cassidy said. "That's what I'm saying, like we have to decide. You have to work harder to keep the puck out of your net in this league. We've had an identity of being that team, and we have to reclaim it."
It wasn't just a couple breakdowns on the goals, though. The Bruins struggled to keep the Leafs out of grade-A areas all night. They gave them too many clean transitions and zone entries that led to scoring chances, and they didn't do a good enough job clearing out the front of the net once Toronto got set up. Through two periods, scoring chances were 30-9 Leafs in all situations (21-8 at 5-on-5). The Bruins finally turned the tables in the third and started creating chances themselves, but only after they were already trailing 4-1.
This was the "heat map" for all shot attempts through two periods.Natural Stat Trick
One bad game doesn't mean the Bruins are a bad defensive team. It doesn't erase the good defensive work they had been doing prior to Saturday. But it does serve as a reminder that there's still more work to do, and that they're not going to be able to get away with something less than their best effort against a top team like Toronto.
