Maple Leafs still looking for top-line answers: ‘I’m getting tired of it’

TORONTO — It may be too early to panic, but it’s not too early to shrug.

Stop us if you’ve heard this before: The Toronto Maple Leafs just played Game 7, and it did not go so great.

On paper, a 3-3-1 start with a minus-1 goal differential and middle-of-the-pack divisional standing isn’t cause for alarm.

But it would be difficult to endure a viewing of Tuesday’s home game against the best opponent the Leafs will face in their first 15 games of a soft early-season schedule and not walk away with a gut feeling: Maybe this team just doesn’t have it.

It’s one thing to lose 5-2 to Sheldon Keefe’s speedy, organized and detailed New Jersey Devils squad; it’s another to routinely blow first-period leads, get caved in territorially, and have your fans cheer loudest for the baseball highlights on the Jumbotron.

Captain Auston Matthews lamented the “roller coaster of consistency” that has marred the first two weeks of the season and, on this night, encouraged locals to flee their seats before a smattering of red caps hit the ice in honour of visitor Jack Hughes’ hat trick — and Keefe’s first taste of victory against the organization that fired him.

Roller Coaster of Consistency could serve as the memoir of this once-promising era of Leafs hockey, which appears at risk of going out with a whimper unless these on-ice strangers get on the same page.

Since training camp, coach Craig Berube’s forward lines have been half-cooked strings of spaghetti thrown at the whiteboard. Nothing’s sticking.

On Tuesday, the coach benched prospect Easton Cowan, who’s in need of “a reset,” and promoted playmaker Max Domi to Matthews’ top line.

Keefe, you’ll recall, was the first coach to throw Domi on Matthews’ wing, and the good pals clicked down the stretch of 2023-24.

“Well, I know Max will be excited,” Keefe said pre-game, upon learning of his opponent’s lineup. “Auston really enjoyed that connection when those guys were matched together. I like the line. I like the look of it.”

Keefe’s like may have grown to love Tuesday, as the Matthew Knies–Matthews–Domi line got outscored 1-0, outshot 6-2, and out-chanced 9-1 by his Devils through 40 minutes.

Berube abandoned the combo, as he has so many others.

The coach is running out of ingredients to chuck into his top-line blender. And if Matthews and Knies aren’t dominating, the Leafs have no chance against true contenders.

“Early on in the season, I thought they were getting their opportunities and looking pretty good. Now, it’s obviously not good enough. I don’t feel like they have any sustained pressure in the offensive zone. It’s one and done, they’re out,” Berube said.

Matthews has depended on one all-star right winger for the bulk of his career. Developing fresh chemistry takes time, no?

“It could be,” Berube said. “But I’m getting tired of it, to be honest with you.”

More tiresome are the Maple Leafs’ horrid second periods, momentum killers in which they are now minus-7.

Berube didn’t do himself any favours by challenging Hughes’ first goal for goalie interference. A questionable decision at best, and one that failed to result in an overturned goal.

“(Screener Ondrej Palat) is in the blue paint, and our goalie, he couldn’t get position,” Berube explained. “It’s always tricky. It’s always 50/50. It is what it is.”

The Devils took the lead by striking on Toronto’s ensuing delay-of-game penalty and never looked back. They doubled their lead on a 4-on-1(!) rush goal, piling three in three minutes and 21 seconds and jumping all over a team prone to turnovers.

“We’re still just a little too sloppy,” John Tavares said. “We have to be smarter with the puck and the way we’re managing the game. And a team like that, with the way they can skate and how quick they are in transition, obviously it really hurt us. And then we’re chasing it.

“We talk about checking and grinding and the things that we want to make part of our identity and that we do well, build on some of those things that we brought into our game last year. So, we haven’t gotten to that consistently enough.”

But it’s not only the forward lines that seem out of sorts.

The veteran blue line was noticeably slow. (To be fair, they were also shorthanded, as Chris Tanev left midway with an upper-body injury.) And rush chances were far too frequent.

“Our D are just standing in there, jumping in there, not reading what’s coming at them. We’re late sometimes with our reloads, and one of the biggest things is turnovers,” Berube critiqued. “We got to be smarter. Our D gotta be smarter. They gotta make a play. They can’t be going all out.”

If the Devils present the closest thing to an early measuring-stick, the Maple Leafs came up short — and slow.

Is speed a concern for the NHL’s sixth-oldest roster?

“When we play the right way and we play direct, we look fast. But when we want to not play that way, we look slow. I think that’s really what it boils down to,” Berube said.

“Is there teams that have more speed in our team? Yeah, there is. But at the same time, that’s why we talk about playing predictable and direct, so you can look fast.”

Mercifully, the Maple Leafs’ next six opponents are all non-playoff teams: Buffalo twice, Calgary, Columbus, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. They’ve been granted a soft schedule to right the ship.

But they need more hands on deck. 

The new recruits have yet to pop, and the familiar heroes are riding the ’coaster.

“There’s a lot of guys that played a good hockey game tonight. They did a lot of good things,” Berube said. 

“But we don’t have enough of them. And if we don’t have everybody going and on the same page and doing the right things, that’s what we’re going to look like.”

A scary — but possibly premature — thought here: Maybe this is all they have. 

Maybe this is who they are.

• Tanev will possibly miss time with an upper-body injury after a knock with Dawson Mercer. The shutdown D-man was also favouring his previously injured right shoulder Saturday.

“Hopefully he’s all right. He’s a huge part of our back end,” Tavares said. “He does so many things well that don’t always get a lot of attention. And his hockey IQ, his awareness, his defending, even his puck play, his reads are exceptional. Hopefully, it’s nothing too serious.”

• Morgan Rielly’s biggest takeaway from his five-and-a-half seasons skating for Keefe: “How he looks at the game is unique. He has a really high IQ, feels like, in how he looks at the game from an offensive standpoint. And he was a pretty creative guy when it came to O-zone play. But I liked playing for him. He was a good communicator.”

The Leafs enjoyed their most productive season over the past 35 years under Keefe, scoring 315 goals in 2022-23.

• Matthews returned the favour Tuesday, walking into the Maple Leafs’ Game 7 wearing a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. jersey.

“Vladdy coming in in Auston’s jersey, what a great moment for this city and for Auston and for the Leafs — and for hockey, for that matter,” said Keefe, whose family still lives in Toronto. “For that to all come together, it’s outstanding.”

A Brampton, Ont., native, Keefe said Monday’s ALCS clincher, which he watched with his own sons in Toronto, whisked him back to boyhood. 

Keefe was about 13, the same as his youngest son, Wyatt, when Joe Carter touched ’em all, and he got to attend Jose Bautista’s bat flip game when he coached the Marlies.

“I’m sure there’s countless stories like that, those connections,” he smiled. “It’s a great day to wake up in Toronto, isn’t it?”

• The wild adventures of Nylander through seven games: 11 assists, two goals, two public callouts, zero 5-on-5 goals, one OT hero moment, one OT goat moment.

• Good news: Injured fourth-line centre Scott Laughton (foot) is no longer in a walking boot.