The Maple Leafs gave up a pair of late power-play goals and saw their penalty kill fall to 27th out of 32 teams.
The Maple Leafs gave up a pair of late power-play goals and saw their penalty kill fall to 27th out of 32 teams.
VANCOUVER — The Toronto Maple Leafs' weaknesses were on full display in their 6-4 loss to the Vancouver Canucks and perhaps the clearest sign of that was in the third period when they surrendered a pair of power-play goals.
After Max Domi took an offensive-zone penalty in the period while the game was tied 4-4, Canucks forward J.T. Miller scored the go-ahead goal at 7:11.
Vancouver was gifted another power play after Mark Giordano was booked for cross-checking former Pius Suter and Elias Pettersson scored to put Vancouver up 6-4 at 10:42.
"That was pretty pathetic," Maple Leafs forward Mitch Marner said of the team's effort.
Vancouver went 2-for-3 on the power-play and strangely enough, it was Marner who got Toronto's penalty kill off to a terrific start by scoring shorthanded on Vancouver's first power-play attempt.
Toronto's penalty kill fell to an efficiency of 76 percent through games played on Saturday, seeing them fall to 27th in the league out of 32 teams.
"We have to look at it," Marner said. "We pride ourselves in helping our teams win games and just our special teams, in general, haven’t been good enough for quite a while now. "
Last season, the Maple Leafs finished 12th in the penalty kill with an efficiency of 81.9 percent.
The last time the Leafs finished a season with a penalty kill worse than 27th in the league was the 2013-14 season. In that year, the Maple Leafs were second in their division in early 2014 only to see them go on an eight-game losing streak and eventually miss the postseason. Their penalty kill efficiency that season was 78.4 percent, better than what Toronto's PK is today.
The previous occasion in which the Leafs finished a season with a penalty kill worse than 76 percent was in 2009-10 when they finished dead last at 74.7 percent following a 30-38-14 record.
The Maple Leafs lost some regular penalty killers in the offseason like Alex Kerfoot and Noel Acciari to name a couple, and they have tried guys like William Nylander and Auston Matthews in that spot this season as well. But this is bad on a new level and is part of the reason why the Leafs find themselves currently 4th place in the Atlantic Division with a 22-14-8 record.
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