After Joshua Mahura passed by William Nylander with the puck and scored the overtime-winner for the Seattle Kraken, Anthony Stolarz smashed his stick over the crossbar in frustration.
It wasn't the best of games for the Toronto Maple Leafs. They couldn't find a goal on the power play until their fourth opportunity of the night. They were good in portions of the game. At other times, they lacked execution.
Ultimately, the final goal of the evening summed up how they played, offensively and in front of Stolarz, who was furious after the game.
"It was a good third period, but first two periods, we kind of let them walk all over us and we just didn't play our game," Stolarz said. "They outworked us in front of the net, they blocked shots. They beat us up and down the ice, and the score was indicative of that. They just outworked us, plain and simple."
In overtime, Toronto was playing man-to-man coverage. On the ice for the Maple Leafs with less than two minutes left in the extra frame were Nylander, Auston Matthews, and Morgan Rielly. Matthews was covering Chandler Stephenson, Rielly had Jordan Eberle, and Nylander, of course, had Mahura.
Until he didn't.
Once Eberle flipped the puck to Mahura at Toronto's blue line, the Seattle defenseman was gone. Nylander didn't have much of a chance to get back and stop Mahura before he closed in and eventually beat Stolarz over the blocker.
"We didn’t do what we should have done to start with. We want to be more of a web so we don’t get beat by speed like that. And we’re too spread out and we’re all man-on-man," Berube said post-game.
"It’s a difficult play for Willy, but he’s got to have that guy if he wants to man-up like that, and the guy skated by him. That’s not what we’re supposed to do in overtime, in that situation."
When Stolarz was asked after the game if the team was experiencing early team gelling issues, he didn't hold back on sharing his opinion, as well as his feelings about the overtime goal.
"I mean, a lot of guys have been here for a while," he said.
"Overtime, you can't let someone beat you up the ice there, and get a clear-cut breakaway. I mean, a minute left, you want to be on the ice in that situation, you got to work hard. You got to work back, and it cost us a point there."
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Stolarz made 28 saves on 29 shots — including one with no mask — in Toronto's 2-1 overtime win over the Rangers.
Stolarz wasn't just sending a message to Nylander, though. He wanted everyone to know that, despite it being early, players need to work because that's when a game like Saturday's can reverse from an overtime loss to an overtime win.
"I mean, at the end of the day, it's like I said, it's early. We do have some time to gel, but I mean, at the end of the day, too, it's more or less just about working hard, and just, when we work hard, the results come," Stolarz continued.
"You saw in the third period, and you can't play for 20 minutes, 30 minutes. We got to do it for a complete 60."
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