Maple Leafs' Mental Errors Prove Costly Against Wild As 5-Game Skid Builds Tension

TORONTO — The Toronto Maple Leafs continued to dig themselves into a hole on Thursday night.

A 5-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild gave them five straight defeats, a slide to the seventh-place spot in the Atlantic Division, and all sorts of frustration for Maple Leafs fans who are now accustomed to a steady string of letdowns.

To wit: the Wild got a hat trick from star winger Matt Boldy, but he had plenty of assistance from Maple Leafs players.

On his first goal of the game, Boldy capitalized on a brutal clearing attempt from defenseman Troy Stecher, and on his third of the night and the eventual game-winner, he was allowed to walk in all alone on Anthony Stolarz while William Nylander inexplicably gave him the time and space needed to score.

The mental errors from Stecher and Nylander took away any positives for Toronto, who got goals from Auston Matthews and Zack MacEwen, who had arguably the game of his life with two-point performance in this losing effort.

And now, Toronto's bleak result has put even more pressure on themselves to win their next game – another home contest against the high-octane Edmonton Oilers Saturday night.

The Maple Leafs did beat the Oilers on Oct. 24 in Edmonton in one of their best games of the season, but it's hard to envision them beating an Oilers team that's won six of their past eight games.

Once Minnesota got their fourth goal of the night, crestfallen Maple Leafs fans began heading for the exits at Scotiabank Arena with more than five minutes left to play. But how could you blame them?

This is clearly a team that is beating themselves nearly as much as their opponents are beating them, and head coach Jim Hiller had no answers after the game for what ails his team at the moment. Expecting Toronto to get four goals past star Minnesota goalie Jesper Wallstedt was Mission: Impossible, and everybody at the rink knew it.

While the shots on goal between the two teams was fairly even at 28-26 in the Maple Leafs' favor, the Wild prevented them from getting secondary scoring chances, and Wallstedt worked his magic. The 23-year-old is now 13-2-3 on the season with a .925 save percentage, and on this night, he came up big when he had to.

Thursday's loss was the first time since the 1990-91 season that Toronto has lost five straight home games in regulation time. Hiller spoke post-game about seeing "lots of hope," but that won't get you very far.

The fact is, once again, the Maple Leafs were outworked, outsmarted and outplayed. And as this losing streak continues, patience is running thin.

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