Joseph Woll will finally make his season debut when the Toronto Maple Leafs host the St. Louis Blues, Fraser Minten takes the morning skate and Max Pacioretty remains out with a lower-body injury. These are not the kinds of games we're used to seeing from Auston Matthews. For the first time in his eight-plus seasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Matthews finished with a -3 in consecutive games. After a disappointing loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Leafs were hoping for a response against the St. Louis Blues in Toronto coach Craig Berube's first game against his former team. While the effort was better than their 6-2 loss to the Jackets on Tuesday, the mistakes persisted in a 5-1 defeat to St. Louis on Thursday. Matthews was on the ice for four goals against. After being knocked off the puck rather easily in his own zone, Matthews received a stern message from Berube on the bench. "The third goal is just not doing things right and it was lazy hockey on the goal," Berube said. "That's the bottom line." Through their first six games, Toronto had played with a solid defensive structure. However, that seems to have unraveled with several turnovers in the neutral zone. Now, the mistakes are happening in their own zone, and without naming him directly, Berube expressed dissatisfaction with Matthews' performance on the penalty kill, which led to St. Louis' second goal. "Our forward's in the wrong spot and they get it to the front of the net," Berube explained. "It's just some of them are mental mistakes. And some of them — we've got to be harder. We've got to be more physical. Killing plays." Matthews couldn’t recall exactly what Berube said to him on the bench but understood that he didn’t play well. "I think the message was pretty simple to the whole group that we just need to be better," Matthews said. "We need to be in the right spots. We need to fill positions. We need to check better. We can't give up slot chances like that against a team like this." In the past, when the Leafs struggled, Matthews was rarely the cause of the team’s biggest errors on the ice. But lately, that’s been changing. Matthews has a lot on his shoulders. He’s adapting to a new coach with a new system, and he’s now the team captain. He's always been a leader in some capacity, but now he wears the "C" and when he struggles, the team often follows suit. In recent games, Matthews has been responsible for some of the team’s worst neutral-zone turnovers. When asked why he thinks the team is struggling in that area, he said: "I think just our F3 in the offensive zone, that third guy high, just being on the same page with the D," Matthews said. "We want to play aggressively. We've got to fill in spots and cover for guys that are pinching in and vice versa. So I think it's just a little bit of a disconnect in that regard." William Nylander was the F3 for the only goal that Matthews wasn’t on the ice for, a turnover that led to an odd-man rush and a game-clinching goal by Jake Neighbours in the third period. "Obviously, my play was stupid there," Nylander said. "Got to be better than that. But I didn’t think we were able to create a lot of chances." The Leafs have been able to outscore their mistakes in the past, but even if they manage to do so again, it’s clear Berube won’t accept that as a solution. He’s focused on making the team more defensively responsible. "We're going through some adversity right now, going to Columbus and getting beat and then losing at home tonight," Berube said. "We're giving up too many odd-man rushes right now and we've got to nip that in the bud. "We've got to fix that. That's a problem right now. And, you know, you're going to go through tough times like this during the year, but you've got to find a way to dig out of it and get the guys better. We all have to be better, myself included."
