Toronto<\/a>\u2019s lone league-leading stat of note, also\u00a0suffered, Nylander losing three of four when\u00a0utilized\u00a0in the middle as Berube\u00a0moved pieces around up\u00a0front,<\/p>\n\u201cTerrible by us not to put up a better effort for Joe,\u201d an understated Nylander said. \u201cOur battle for the pucks weren\u2019t crisp, they were coming up with more than us all night.\u201d<\/p>\n
HOLL-ER IF YOU NEED HIM<\/p>\n
What\u2019s to say about the kind of karma the Leafs are getting this year when the guy once considered their biggest blue-line liability has the winning goal on another bad night for the defenceman now labeled the same?<\/p>\n
For those keeping track, Justin Holl was plus-1 over 111 games for the Detroit Red Wings after leaving Toronto and the Blues thought he could fill a hole as return as part of the Justin Faulk trade. Holl, moving into the play instead of playing it safe, just kissed a Jordan Kyrou shot with his shaft for his first as a Blue.<\/p>\n
Rielly was a minus-2, his pocket picked on St. Louis\u2019 opening goal. But he had plenty of company among loose Leaf defencemen. Troy Stecher dropped a clearing attempt in the slot that Woll fortunately got a pad on, while the usually smooth Oliver Ekman-Larsson had stick-handilng issues, especially on the power play.<\/p>\n
NEXT YEAR ALREADY HERE?<\/p>\n
Pity\u00a0McCabe\u2019s\u00a0pre-game comments on the\u00a0Leafs\u2019\u00a0need\u00a0for personal pride and standard of play\u00a0was\u00a0apparently not\u00a0heard or\u00a0heeded.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0league\u2019s second-highest\u00a0shot blocker, who stopped his 174th\u00a0on Saturday, had been asked how\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0kept\u00a0his effort up with the season so far gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cA\u00a0large chunk of us\u00a0are\u00a0going to be back here next year. You need to build bonds with teammates and play for each other. If\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0not playing hard,\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0leaving your\u00a0teammate\u00a0out to dry. I think\u00a0we\u2019ve\u00a0done\u00a0a good job\u00a0of\u00a0it the past couple of weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has obviously been a tough year\u00a0(but) anytime you take things for granted in this\u00a0league,\u00a0you\u2019ll\u00a0find yourself out of it\u00a0pretty quickly. There are always guys knocking at the door to\u00a0beak their way in. Everyone says\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0hard to\u00a0make it (but)\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0harder to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some might\u00a0indeed\u00a0save their jobs in these final\u00a0games,\u00a0others\u00a0ought to be\u00a0rooted out.<\/p>\n
Lhornby@postmedia.com
X: @sunhornby<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, at least friends and family\u00a0saw\u00a0a lot of Joseph Woll in action. No avoiding that with 25 giveaways…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[71,825,93,8450,1239,5,3082,1127,1479,3821,1821,2857,20,5172,10077,890,4,782,31124,534,66,31,5171,5928,1114],"class_list":["post-528764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto-maple-leafs","tag-blues","tag-craig-berube","tag-detroit-red-wings","tag-easton-cowan","tag-frederik-andersen","tag-hockey","tag-jacob-quillan","tag-jake-mccabe","tag-jordan-kyrou","tag-joseph-woll","tag-justin-faulk","tag-justin-holl","tag-maple-leafs","tag-mapleleafs","tag-matias-maccelli","tag-max-domi","tag-nhl","tag-oliver-ekman-larsson","tag-rielly","tag-st-louis","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-maple-leafs","tag-torontomapleleafs","tag-troy-stecher","tag-william-nylander"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116310655020933560","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}