Rigamarole - A Foot In The Crease - Episode 3.7
www.afootinthecrease.com
The Maple Leafs so far this season have looked about as uncomfortable playing with a lead as a kid who knows they’ve done something wrong, knows they’re going to hear about it, but just isn’t sure quite when the screaming and yelling is going to come. For some unknown reason, and believe me, we’re working on it, when the Maple Leafs carry a lead into the third period, it almost seems like they are expecting things to go sour in an awful hurry. They get away from their hard checking, energetic style of play and are instead being caught flat footed, standing around, watching their opponents control the game.
Flat footedness and standing around when you have a group of players who certainly couldn’t be referred to as fleet of foot at the best of times in turn leads to scoring chances and penalties. With questionable penalty killing, this pattern more often than not leads to goals. Of the thirty seven goals they have surrendered thus far, sixteen have come in the third period of play, far and away the highest total of any team in the NHL. See it’s not that the Leafs aren’t in positions to win games. Save for the Carolina debacle two weeks ago, the Maple Leafs have been in striking distance going into the third period. It’s not that they can’t score goals; in fact they do it better than any team in the league sitting first in goals for. They just can’t keep them out of their own net, sitting dead last in goals against. When that’s the case, it’s no surprise the Maple Leafs are hovering right around the 500 mark.
The mark of any good team is one that wins more often than not in the crunch. When crunch time hits for the Maple Leafs, these days, they just aren’t producing with the game on the line. And until they realize, hockey is the same game in the third and it is in the first and second, don’t expect this up and down season to change. But hey, all that was just rigmarole.
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