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The Good, Bad & Ugly In The Maple Leafs 2-1 Loss To Canucks

Last night, the Toronto Maple Leafs lost to the Vancouver Canucks. What were the good, bad, and ugly aspects of the game?

by
Stan Smith
February 9, 2025

The Toronto Maple Leafs ended their four-game Western road trip with a 2-1 loss to the Vancouver Canucks. What were the good, bad, and ugly aspects of the game?

The Good: Morgan Rielly Looked Like the Player of Old

We will start with the good to get it out of the way because there wasn’t a lot of good for Maple Leafs’ fans in the game.

After struggling this season, Morgan Rielly has looked more like the Morgan Rielly of old lately. He has been getting more involved with the offense, playing aggressively with the puck, and looking for more shooting opportunities. He scored Toronto’s only goal of the game. Just after the Maple Leafs failed to score on a power play late in the second period, Rielly fired a wrist shot from the faceoff dot to the left of Vancouver goalie Kevin Lankinen that beat Lankinen on the stick side. It was the fourth straight game in which Rielly had registered a point. Reilly also has 10 shots on the net in those four games.

Joseph Woll deserved a better fate. He kept the Maple Leafs in the game early when the Canucks were outplaying them. Vancouver outshot Toronto 11-6 in the first period but only managed to get just one puck past Woll. Woll stopped 23 of the 25 shots he faced (a .920 SV%).

There is one strange statistic involving Woll. In his last eight starts, he is 5-3. In the five games he won, Woll has given up three goals in each of those games. Woll, in the three games he has lost, has allowed just two goals in each game.

If it wasn’t for Woll, the score of this game could have easily been much more lopsided in favor of the Canucks.

The Bad: The Canucks Were the Better Team

Vancouver was the better team in this game. While the shot attempts (64-59 Canucks) and the shots (28-25 Canucks) were close, according to Naturalstattrick.com, the High Danger Scoring Chances at all strengths were 14-6 Vancouver. At 5-on-5, the Canucks had ten High Danger Chances to Toronto’s four.

After starting John Tavares with Mitch Marner and William Nylander and having Auston Matthews center Matthew Knies and Max Domi, Head Coach Craig Berube switched things up in the third period. He was trying to create more offense. He moved Marner back with Matthews and Knies and reunited Tavares and Nylander on the second line. The tactic failed as Toronto was unable to score in the final period.

The Ugly: David Kampf Was the Maple Leafs Best Player

Toronto’s top forward at 5-on-5 in Shot Attempts For (71%), Shots For (78%), Expected Goals For (88%), Scoring Chances For (88%), and High Danger Chances For (100%) was David Kampf. It was an excellent game for Kampf, and those stats deserved more being listed in the “Good” part of this post. However, that is not a good sign if Kampf is your best player.

What was ugly was Toronto’s worst line during the game. At 5-on-5, they had a combined Shot Attempts of 30%, a combined Shots For 29%, a combined Expected Goal of 19%, a combined Scoring Chance For of 29%, and a combined High Danger Scoring Chance of 26%. What line was that? Tavares with Nylander and Marner.

Matthew Knies Maple Leafs hit — Matthew Knies of the Maple Leafs is a physical presence.

The chemistry between the three players does not seem to be there for whatever reason. Marner appeared to struggle the most playing his off-wing. That trio also lacks a Matthew Knies or a Bobby McMann-type player to go into the corners and muck things up.

What’s Next for the Maple Leafs?

The Maple Leafs did lose ground on the Florida Panthers in the fight for first place in the Atlantic Division. The Panthers defeated the Ottawa Senators 5-1 to move three points ahead of Toronto. Toronto does have two games in hand over Florida. The Tampa Bay Lightning have won four of their last five games and are creeping into the picture. They sit in third place, four points back of the Maple Leafs, with a game in hand.

Most of the players in the Maple Leafs can relax, take care of whatever ails them, and take their minds off the game for the next two weeks as the spotlight swings toward the Four Nations Cup. It will be interesting to see which of Matthews (Team USA), Marner (Team Canada), and Nylander (Team Sweden) will have bragging rights once a champion has been decided.