Pretty poor showing from the team following a really good weekend. Very few crisp passes, tons of reaching for contested pucks rather than moving their feet, poor decision making with the puck, and overall just a very lifeless group outside of finishing checks.
Similar to the effort on the last game before All-Star. On that, I can at least understand the human nature of taking your foot off the gas at work right before vacation. It happens in every industry and every team in the league sees the occasional night like that. But you can't have that effort 3 games into the post all-star push when you are sitting right on the playoff bubble.
I thought Toronto played a good, patient, simple game for a team missing their #1 D and two of their best four forwards. But they did not play anything close to the caliber of game that an NHL team should have been limited to 15 shots. That outcome was much more on our effort than Toronto's IMO.
This was the type of game that makes it really easy for a GM to tell the current group "you haven't given me a reason not to sell at deadline."
For the first 6 weeks under Bannister, this team did a great job of making Army's deadline decision hard. They went 13-6-1 over a really tough schedule. They beat a bunch of genuinely good teams in the process (Dallas x 2, Florida, Vancouver x2, Carolina, Rangers are all still top 10 teams). But the last 4 games have seen 2 horrible efforts and a 2-2 record against a very soft schedule (3 teams in the bottom 8 and the 13th place Leafs team missing 3 key guys).
Pretty big 2 games coming up. Edmonton stumbled out of the break, but just put up 5 3rd period goals on the Wings to win 8-4. And after that we get a Nashville team that is right below us in the standings. We're still a little over 3 weeks from deadline, but this next week might be decision time for Army after that effort.
