Maple Leafs Lose Opener, Fans Lose Minds

From what I saw of the game, the Leafs dominated. They make a habit of playing that way, and they’ll win their fair share of games. They got a point. No time to panic.

In order for the “Wisdom of the Crowds” argument to work, you need to draw on a heterogeneous source – the more diversity the better the so-called wisdom.

I’m guessing that 30 hockey bloggers look more like David Duke’s staff than a United Nations committee.

yup, me again

I had a night to sleep on it. Beauchemin still blew chunks out there last night.

Down Goes Brown continues his previews with the Central Division also known as the division the Leafs should be in.

Word. I’ve also added the one that they are in.

The Wisdom of Crowds is bullshit.

For the record, I voted eighth.

And also, 30 isn’t really a crowd. Not sure why they went with that angle.

Did anyone find it funny that the pregame show was all about Candian Hockey Heroes (Coffey, Lemieux, Cassie Campbell, Henderson, etc), yet the cereimonial puck drop was taken by Kaberle and Gionta?

I know Kaberle wears an A and is the longstanding Leaf on the team, but I would have made an effort to put a Canadian out there. Nothing against Kaberle (or Gionta) but I just think it would have meant a lot more for someone like Stajan or Schenn or whomever that grew up watching those guys.

Does anyone know how serious the Markov injury is? I hope hes gone until March

May be nitpicking a bit but…

Did anyone else notice that Price didn’t see a lot of the shots until after they bounced off his chest.

He was very good positionally but except for a few good saves he wasn’t really seeing the puck.

What happened to – shoot high to score and shoot low for rebounds…

Looks to me like a ton of those shots went straight into the breadbasket.

Komi’s 5 minor penalties (2 for high sticking) hampered Toronto’s offense way more than the defence. Especially considering two of them negated a Montreal penalty and cost us valuable PP time.

The PK actually looked pretty damned good last night as they only gave up 3 total shots on the PK all night; however 2 of those got through Toskala for goals. If your team only gives up 3 total shots in nearly 5 minutes of PK time, as the goalie you need to post better than a .333 save % on the PK.

That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

the one goal that pissed me off the most was the one the habs 4th line put in, all three leaf forwards watched the hab skate in for the tap in

you know who also was dead sexy last night?

Kaberle

This game was way too reminiscent of last year. We outshoot the opponent, carry the play, and score enough goals to win, but blow a late lead. Toskala makes some impressive-looking saves but also let’s in at least one clear softie and on the others didn’t put himself in a position to make the save easy.

The difference this year is that we have an honest-to-God talented young goalie waiting in the wings rather than the decayed corpse of our former hero CuJo. I have a feeling our chances of making the playoffs will turn on how long Burke and Wilson are willing to put up with the charade that Toskala is still an NHL calibre goalie.

For all the faults we’ve identified, we still dominated and heavily outshot and out-chanced the dirty Habs. If we can play at that level over the year and get even league-average goaltending I’ll take our chances.

Did anyone notice the “67” on the end boards beside the Molson Canadian ad? I don’t know why the hell it was there but I’m gonna boycott the shit out of Molson (well, I was already, but that’s beside the point).

So running the goalie is cool this year, right? Sweet.

im worried that saturday might be a disaster against Ovechkin…

Down Goes Brown on the Preds chances in the Norris:

Fearless forecast: Will probably be the best team in the division without a color in their name.

THE LEAFS ARE UNDEFEATED IN REGULATION TIME.

AWESOME.

Wilson had said before the game that he is not a fan of staged fights, orr and Rosehill than proceed to have a staged fight each. Neither of them played (or barley..) after the fights. Coincidence?

I think wilson wants them to crash and bang down low, not put on a shit show…

1) Once Finger and Van Ryn are healthy, neither Exelby nor White belong on the blueline.
2) Stempniak was quite UN-ninja like. He worked hard all night and created some good chances.
3) It didn’t seem like Hagman had much chemistry with Grabbo and Poni. I don’t recall them playing together in the
      preseason, so maybe just a little time together will smooth things out.
4) Komisarek and Beauchemin will be fine. I think both were trying too hard to make a great first impression.

*My hat is off to Brian Burke. I know it was the first game of the season, so emotions were high, but the volume in the ACC is noticeably louder than anything I’ve heard at games recently. Burke didn’t just change the culture of the dressing room, he changed the culture of the fans.
*I got goose bumps from the national anthem. Would it be overkill to do that every game?
*Lots of new pairings, lots of rust. Mostly a lack of familiarity and a lack of communication seems to be the defensive breakdown issues. Juggling pairs in preseason is fun, but Wilson may have played that trick for too long. No one seemed to know what their partner was going to do last night.

• Toskala looked better in the loss than he did in others last season. Yes, he made some mistakes, but still, if he can keep that form, there is still a shot he gets dumped at the deadline. I’m not reopening that can of worms, just saying there is hope he could regain some value in a trade scenario. That’s the last I’m going to say on that.
• Komisarek and Beauchemin need to be a million times more controlled/better. Komi’s calls were borderline (the Gomez one was just plain wrong, but he deserved the Gionta call, so it kind of evened out.) I was not all that impressed with his “truculence.” I know for him, this game was more of a statement for him than for others on the team, but if he’s supposed to be on our top d pairing, he can’t spend half the game in the box. Beauchemin has been discussed ad nauseum here so ya, he needs to be better…
• Speaking of being better, the Leafs need to get better in front of the net. Stalberg has those jets, but sometimes he’s going to need his size and get parked in front of the net. All the Leafs goals came from about 2 feet from the goal line. Fewer shots from the perimeter and more net crashing please. Jason Blake, I’m looking at you.
• Viktor Stalberg is fast. Crazy fast. Inhumanly fast. He shouldn’t be able to do what he does. It’s going to take me the entire season to accept that he actually exists.
• I enjoyed this game more as a loss than I thought I would. If this is the compete level we can expect, then we’re miles ahead of last season.

to turn on the TV and discover there’s hockey on, which automatically made my day better!

Huet is costing the Hawks this game.

If you’re so aghast at a fight 2 minutes into the game that you spend 5 minutes on the radio tirading against, making it painfully clear you only continued to watch because of your job, please quit. I would certainly not miss you one little bit.

Kovalchuk named captain of the Thrashers.

what was Toskala’s Save % last night?
I ask because Luongo’s was .818
That’s pretty pathetic.

here is an interview with Wilson after practice today.
Stalberg was our best player.