You can’t get away with crappy goaltending and bad giveaways and a lack of attention to detail and poor coaching decisions when you’re up against a team like Tampa Bay. From simmonssteve: It's already must win-time for the Maple Leafs
But both teams know better. The Leafs, maybe more, than the Lightning. They won 5-0 in Game 1 against the Lightning a year ago. They lost 7-3 to the same team, with half a different lineup wearing Maple Leafs blue, Tuesday night. The momentum of Game 1 did not carry over to Game 2 last year, which is a lesson long ago learned from the playoffs.
“It’s a sign of a mature team to sweep those games under the rug and get back at it,” said Tampa coach Jon Cooper, talking about his Lightning from a year ago, the Maple Leafs right now. “There’s an urgency thing. I’m not saying Toronto didn’t come out with urgency. It was just the way the game went. We felt we lost it in every way possible. The goalie felt he could be better. The players felt he could be better. The coaches felt we could be better.
The players have to know they can’t give Tampa Bay so much room around their net, can’t turn pucks over continuously in bad places, and the coaching staff has to determine, somehow, why this group of Leafs, and the one before them, don’t appear ready to start games often enough, playoff season after playoff season.
Samsonov doesn’t have to match Vasilevskiy. But he can’t let in three freebies the way he did in Game 1.Article contentThe corrections and upgrades for the Maple Leafs are challenging but can be made. It isn’t often a team loses on poor performances from the starting goaltender and all six defencemen. With four power-play goals against. That’s a lot to go wrong in one night. A lot to quickly fix between Game 1 and Game 2.
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