The Leafs are Embarrassing Themselves

We got a glimpse into the psyche of Toronto Maple Leafs players right now, and things look really bad. And you know what? If you're a fan of the Leafs, after watching tonight's game, I don't know how you're not disgusted. When it comes to getting a look at how the team is feeling, check out this penalty which essentially iced the game against the Leafs. Matthews looked god-awful all night, and here he misses a bouncing puck, they lose the power play opportunity, and Matthews takes a lazy penalty. You can see he's muttering to himself, Tavares is shooting the puck against the boards after the play is over. Just a disaster. But the game and the play of the Leafs' top two lines was somehow even worse, with a few exceptions. And you could just tell, when LA went up two goals, there was no chance the Leafs were tying it. But let's talk about some individual instances. LA's third goal was an especially poor effort by the Leafs. I mean, I had to watch this a few times to really clock how bad it is. Sheldon Keefe has recognized that the Leafs are having trouble getting the puck out of their own defensive zone. That's what we see here. And this is an effort thing, this is the Leafs' second line, and aside from John Tavares, who was all over the ice, literally look at the players, he skated more than the rest of them combined, they were completely outworked by LA. Nylander here, he doesn't fight for the breakout pass, the puck stays in, and then he just skates around aimlessly. Kerfoot is excited to get up ice on the breakout, he skates away, and then doesn't come back quickly to help on defense. Riley misses the opportunity for a few defensive plays, then he just stands around, loses his assignment, who then scores the goal. And I mean, look at the bench afterward, everyone, including Sheldon Keefe, is visibly deflated. The third line, however, came out soon afterwards, they worked their ass off, and scored a nice goal based pretty much solely on high energy forechecking. Let's take a look now at the fourth goal. What is Matthews doing here? Admittedly, yeah, it's not his man who ends up scoring, but he's like gliding down the ice when the player he's supposed to be covering is right there. Had the goalie made this initial stop, he would not have been in position to help fight for the rebound. The Leafs also had a key power play in the third, and it was essentially just three really bad zone entries with Leafs players trying to make individual hero plays. Matthews with this weird little drop pass, nobody really fighting for the puck, and Keefe ran PP1 for the entire two minutes pretty much. Afterwards, the fourth line came out and was immediately much better. And I mean, even on the goal the Leafs scored, look at Matthews, he's not even pushing the net. Just bad overall. He also had that penalty I mentioned one other earlier on. If I'm being honest, I think both calls were pretty soft. But I don't know, this was a really terrible game for Matthews. It was a bad game for all of the Leafs' first two lines except for Tavares, and they play again tomorrow night. Keefe on the bench is just also not setting an example. Look at his posture, his attitude here. I think he knows his job must soon be on the line. I'm not saying the Leafs are screwed, but they don't look great right now. Let me know your thoughts down below.