Leafs played the Devils and the Leafs came out of the first period seemingly doing okay and up one-nothing. But then the second period came, and all trivia about goal differential per period aside – like aside and into the garbage can, please – the problem was the Leafs, well, they played like ass for the entire period. Spoiler: maybe a little longer than that.

New Jersey scored four because they kept turning the puck over and getting rush chances. The general thumping the Leafs got took the gloss of Matias Maccelli's first Leafs goal.

In un-fun news, Chris Tanev was hit in the head by another player's head in a freak accident and left the game.

Oh, and there was the whacky goalie interference challenge that seemed to be well short of enough to overturn a call on the ice of good goal.

That was my take on it too. And the end result was a failed challenge and a goal against on the Devils power play. And that's not even the most frustrating goal of the game.

Everyone needed a change, and no one could backcheck, and you know, maybe if you aren't in the d-zone for an hour and a half every period... ah, never mind. The play was bad, situational obliviousness from Domi, and the thing about this period was that when it was only 3-2 for New Jersey, the Devils went to sleep, barely shot the puck, and the Leafs cuddled up with them and had a snooze. Once the Devils scored again – points up – Auston Matthews was suddenly Auston Matthews in the offensive zone for the full five minutes left.

As for the third period, the only game really was to see if the Devils could double up the Leafs in SOG before it was over.

The Leafs started playing harder in the final minutes – they did in every period, like they notice time is running out on them. The Devils had another gear. And an ENG to give Hughes a hat trick.

Considering the nauseating blather all summer about identity, that's a good question. Because their most notable trait is how long the list is of players who add nothing, do nothing, bring nothing. I don't think it is too early to call this an existential crisis.

The Leafs just signed their starter to a serious deal, they have a very healthy clutch of highly talented players, and they don't look even a little bit like a functional team. I guess the gloss of the LLC line in preseason outshone a lot of dullness everywhere else. This is the sort of situation that leads to expectations of a move of some kind from the front office. Easy to demand it, hard to do it. But everyone wants to know:

Some news:

And that's it for today. The next game is Friday in Buffalo.

From The Branches