Maple Leafs vs Mammoth: Rush Goals, Rough Stolarz Night Sink Toronto 5-4

Maple Leafs vs Mammoth: the result

The Maple Leafs vs Mammoth game on Oct. 13 ended in a 5-4 Utah win at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, and the score flatters Toronto. The Mammoth led 3-0 early in the second period and 5-2 after 40 minutes before power-play goals from Auston Matthews and John Tavares and a 6-on-5 goal from Gavin McKenna made the last 10 minutes interesting. Toronto then had Anthony Stolarz pulled for a 6-on-4 over the final 1:46, with Dylan Guenther in the box for tripping, and could not find the tying goal past Karel Vejmelka.

The loss finished a three-game western trip at 1-1-1 and dropped the Leafs to 3-3-1 on the season. Utah improved to 5-2-0, per NHL.com, and stayed unbeaten at home. Head coach Jim Hiller summed up the trip as "okay" after the game, per Maple Leafs Hot Stove, and pointed out that it could have been a great one.

Stolarz stopped 23 of 28 shots, an .821 save percentage, in his first start since the 5-4 overtime win over Nashville on Oct. 6. Vejmelka made 22 saves for Utah.

How the goals went in

The game turned in the second period, the same period that has hurt Toronto all trip. The goals were scored in this order, per the NHL.com recap and the official box score:

Period / timeScoreGoalNote1st, 14:55UTA 1-0Daniil ButOff the rush, past Morgan Rielly2nd, 1:00UTA 2-0Vincent TrocheckTap-in off a Logan Cooley feed2nd, 4:01UTA 3-0Mikhail SergachevShort-handed, after a blocked shot2nd, 5:16UTA 3-1Auston MatthewsPower play, Tavares assisting2nd, 14:17UTA 4-1Dylan GuentherShot over the blocker from the right circle2nd, 16:29UTA 4-2Jack RoslovicEven strength2nd, 19:20UTA 5-2MacKenzie WeegarLate-period dagger3rd, 7:12UTA 5-3John TavaresPower play3rd, 11:01UTA 5-4Gavin McKenna6-on-5 on a delayed penalty, from William Nylander

The Hockey News counted five of Utah's goals as rush goals. That number, more than the goaltending, is the one that should worry Hiller's staff. Rielly said as much to NHL.com after the game: "If you look at their goals, they're off the rush, so there is something going on there that we have to fix."

Stolarz: not the only problem, but a big one

Both things can be true. The Leafs gave up quality rush chances, and Stolarz did not make a save he needed to make on several of them. Guenther's goal came from the top of the right circle on a clean look, the kind of shot a starting-calibre goalie stops more often than not. Sergachev's short-handed goal came off a loose puck that slid past him after Nick Blankenburg blocked a Barrett Hayton shot, a goal no power play should allow.

Stolarz owned it after the game, telling reporters he could have been sharper on a few of the goals, per The Hockey News. Hiller's assessment was blunter in its brevity: he called his goalie "alright," again per The Hockey News. That is a coach declining to throw a player under the bus, not an endorsement.

Context matters here. Stolarz won his first two starts, the 2-1 win over the Islanders on Sept. 30 and the overtime win over Nashville, and he sat for a week before this one. Sergei Bobrovsky played Vegas and Colorado, stopping 30 of 33 in the 6-3 win in Denver. One bad night does not change the tandem, but it does make the Thursday call against Buffalo a lot less automatic.

What went right: Matthews, Tavares and the power play

The power play scored twice, and both goals came from the top unit Hiller rebuilt when Tavares came back from the birth of his son. Matthews's backhand cut the lead to 3-1 for his fifth goal of the season and stretched his point streak to five games. He added an assist and now has 12 points (five goals, seven assists) in seven games after being held off the scoresheet in the first two. His run earned him the NHL's first star of the week for the week ending Oct. 11.

Tavares had a goal and an assist in his first game back on the top unit. McKenna's goal, on a pass from William Nylander below the left dot, was the 18-year-old's latest sign that he belongs on the ice when Toronto is chasing a game. We made the case for keeping him on the first unit in our piece on McKenna's power-play role; the 6-on-5 sequence helps it.

The late push also showed the other side of this roster. When Toronto plays in the offensive zone, it can bury teams. The trouble is everything that happens before it gets there.

The Tanev-sized hole on the blue line

This was the first game of Chris Tanev's stint on injured reserve. He left the 6-3 win in Colorado with an upper-body injury, was placed on IR for at least three games, and Marshall Rifai was recalled from the Marlies. The Hockey News reported before the game that Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Darren Raddysh would absorb more minutes.

Without Tanev, the Leafs lost the defenceman most responsible for killing rushes before they start. Rush defence is about gap control and the first pass out of your own end, and the opening goal is a clean example: But took the puck through the neutral zone and beat Rielly one-on-one before he shot. We looked at what Tanev's absence does to the pairings in our Tanev injury breakdown and at the man who stepped in, in our Nick Blankenburg piece.

The bigger question belongs to GM John Chayka. The Leafs have reportedly made exploratory calls on Calgary's Zach Whitecloud, per David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period. Nights like this are the argument for turning exploratory into a real offer.

Grading the 1-1-1 road trip

The three games, in order:

DateOpponentResultLeafs goalieOct. 8Vegas Golden Knights3-4 shootout lossSergei BobrovskyOct. 10Colorado Avalanche6-3 winSergei BobrovskyOct. 13Utah Mammoth4-5 lossAnthony Stolarz

Three points from six on a trip through Las Vegas, Denver and Salt Lake City is not a disaster. Those are three of the more dangerous teams in the West. But the way the points were dropped is a pattern. In Vegas, Toronto was outshot 21-8 in the second period on the way to being outshot 43-24, and only Bobrovsky kept it to a shootout. In Utah, the second period was a four-goal avalanche. Hiller said after the game that three second periods on the trip were not good enough, per Maple Leafs Hot Stove.

The grade is a C. The stars produced, the power play worked and the young players did not look out of place. The team defence did not hold up when the opposing coach had the long change.

What's next for the Leafs

Toronto returns home to face the Buffalo Sabres at Scotiabank Arena on Thursday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. ET. Buffalo is also 3-3-1 after a 4-3 shootout loss in Montreal on Oct. 13, and it may be without captain Rasmus Dahlin, who is day-to-day with an upper-body injury. Then come the Islanders (Oct. 17), the Sharks (Oct. 19) and the Rangers (Oct. 22), all at home.

Three things to watch on the homestand. First, the goalie: Bobrovsky has the better recent body of work and should get Thursday. Second, the breakout: if the Leafs keep rimming pucks to forwards who have no plan, as several observers noted in Vegas, the long-change problem will follow them home. Third, Tanev's timeline, which TSN's Insider Trading panel said on Oct. 13 the club was still working through.

The full standings picture is on our standings page, and every cap number on the roster is on the contracts page.