The Leafs lost their first game back from the Olympic Break 4-2 to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Shots on goal by the end of the game were close as the Lightning took their foot off the gas significantly, but the Leafs still only held 40% of the shots at 5v5 and 43% of the chances. It's hard to compete when the opponent takes more shots that can turn into goals than you do.

John Tavares scored late in the third, seconds after Jake Guentzel missed an empty net to make it 3-1. Matthew Knies scored in total garbage time to make it 4-2, but continued his streak of scoring against Florida teams. OEL led the team in shots (10), ahead of Tavares, Maccelli, Knies, and Rielly all with five. Benoit took two penalties, OEL and Matthews took one each. Matthews led the team in icetime and won two thirds of his faceoffs in an otherwise quiet night with only three shot attempts.

Anthony Stolarz allowed four goals on 36 shots. He faced 4.54 expected goals so he somehow performed better than expected on a night he gave up four.

Here are the goals:

There were a couple no-goals that were waved off before Point opened the scoring.

Goncalves followed it up with a second before the end of the first.

Kucherov scored on the power play to make it 3-0.

The Leafs pulled the goalie early and we got this funny moment, excentuated by Tavares scoring on the same play.

It didn't take long for Tampa to get it back.

And then Knies with another flukey goal in garbage time.

Luke Haymes scored a hat trick for the Marlies last night. He's a centre if you feel like you need some of those after the deadline.

Another centre prospect, Tyler Hopkins, scored twice for Guelph.

And Harry Nansi, not sure if he's training as a centre or went back to wing, it's been a while. Anyway, he scored too, giving him 1g, 9a in 9 games. If you can't tell, he's a playmaker.

Here were the NHL scores from last night.

And here's Berube and the team talking after the loss.

And ICYMI, here's the team talking before the loss.

The Leafs will now take an unmarked van to the other Florida swamp for a game against the Panthers tonight.

From The Branches