‘We weren’t ready for it.’ Maple Leafs no-show in lopsided Game 4 loss to Lightning

Who would pass up a chance to watch a playoff game for free? There are far worse ways to spend a Sunday night. But it’s not ideal when you’re supposed to be playing the game.

That was the Toronto Maple Leafs’ experience in Game 4 of their first-round matchup against the Tampa Bay Lightning. There’s no nice way to put it: the Bolts competed, and the Leafs, at least in the minutes that truly mattered, were listless voyeurs, suffering a 7-3 pummelling. Even that final score was relatively generous, puffed up by a garbage-time third period that included two William Nylander goals and two Lightning empty-netters.

After showing a noteworthy ability to engage their opponent from the opening puck drop in Games 1-3, the Leafs opened Game 4 in quicksand, overwhelmed by the moment against a hungrier Tampa team looking to equal the series Sunday. Roughly halfway through the first period, the Leafs had a single shot on goal, while the Lightning had already blitzed them for three goals: one on a patented Steven Stamkos one-timer in the game’s second minute, one on a pinballing puck that Leafs goaltender Jack Campbell cleared up the middle onto Pierre-Edouard Bellemare’s stick; and one when big Patrick Maroon drove hard to the net and collected his own rebound after Campbell made a nice initial save.

The Leafs showed some minor pushback with sustained offensive zone pressure late in the first period, but any dream of a rally got deflated a few minutes into the second when Ross Colton beat Campbell with a wrist shot through his glove. There was no traffic in front of him. The look was clean. It was simply a shot Campbell had to stop. It wasn’t going to be the Leafs’ night.

“I expect myself to make a lot of saves (on) the ones that they had tonight,” Campbell told reporters after Game 4. “But, learn from it and be ready for the next one.”

After a Corey Perry power-play goal made it 5-0 less than halfway through the game, Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe had a relatively long discussion with Campbell at the bench and decided to extract him from the endless Lightning assault. Backup goaltender Erik Kallgren came in to mop up. Campbell said he wanted to stay in the game and battle but respected Keefe’s decision.

“It’s more just a mindset and wanting to be sure that he wasn’t feeling like he really wanted to finish the game and put in a good showing or anything like that,” Keefe told reporters after Game 4. “I just made it clear to him that it’s obviously a long way to come back and we need him to be good to go for the next game.”

Not that Game 4 could be pinned solely on Campbell, who allowed five goals on 16 shots. Mark the Leafs lineup down as “absent.” The game was more or less out of reach before they padded the stats with a minor comeback in the third. Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, who combined for four goals in the first two games, had none during the two-game road trip. As a team, the Leafs chased the play and handed Tampa a whopping eight power plays in Game 4. Toronto did not resemble the confident team that won Game 1 and 3 or the even the competitive yet undisciplined team that lost Game 2.

“We have to do a better job of being on our toes and being ready for that,” said captain John Tavares about the Leafs’ no-show start to Game 4. “We knew it was coming. We just obviously didn’t execute.”

Theoretically, heading back to Toronto having reacquired home-ice advantage for a best of three should feel like a win for the Leafs. A 2-2 series isn’t a terrible place to be in what was always projected to be a close matchup. It’s supposed to be hard against the back-to-back defending champs. The Lightning deserve all the credit for responding. They got great effort up and down the lineup in Game 4, punctured by five goals from their bottom six forwards.

But the Leafs didn’t just lose. They were humiliated for most of Game 4. The Lightning were in Game 1, but their championship pedigree allowed them to shrug it off. How will the Leafs respond? Will their psyche prove fragile as it has so many times in the 18 years since they last won a playoff series? Or will they show, as they did in Games 1 and 3, that they’re not the same Leaf team this time around?

It will come down to mimicking the Lightning’s resiliency. The Bolts are now 16-0 in the past three playoff runs following a defeat. Can the Leafs pick themselves up and respond similarly? In the 2018 playoffs, they got bombed 5-1 and 7-3 by the Boston Bruins on the road in Games 1 and 2 before winning Game 3 at home and eventually forcing a seven-game series. In 2019, after a 4-1 loss to Boston in Game 2, Toronto took Game 3 at home. Showing up in Game 7s is another story – we’ll leave that stat alone unless it matters later – but, earlier in playoff series, heading home after losses of three or more goals, the Leafs have shown some backbone in recent seasons.

They also might have an easier time fighting back on the scoresheet in Game 3 with Keefe getting the last change back. The Matthews/Marner duo was erased by the Alex Killorn/Anthony Cirelli/Brayden point trio at 5-on-5 for a second straight game, with Keefe switching out left winger Michael Bunting for Alexander Kerfoot before going back to Bunting late in the game. Keefe will have an easier time sheltering his top line from Tampa’s defensive virtuosos in Game 5. The Lightning got a scare in Game 4 when Cirelli got twisted up with a sliding Morgan Rielly and hit the boards hard in the second period, but Cirelli returned for the third period.

Cirelli took a licking and got back up – just like his team from Game 3 to Game 4. Will the Leafs do the same? There’s a good chance we’ll know early in Game 5. The team that scored first has won – and opened up a lead of three or more goals – in every game this series.

“We battled hard the other night to be in the position we’re in, and to come out (tonight), we knew they were going to come hard, and we weren’t ready for it,” said defenseman Jake Muzzin. So we go back home, get ready, go again.”

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‘We weren’t ready for it.’ Maple Leafs no-show in lopsided Game 4 loss to Lightning

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