I mean it certainly does not help when a big part of that line, and the part of the line that probably touches the puck the most, has been wildly ineffective.
I find it interesting that people said Tavares was invisible when he actually made a number of great plays... He set up Mikheyev for one of our better scoring chances in the game. He won 15/17 of his faceoffs (extremely underrated and ridiculously good). He did a pretty good job defensively and his line had the best Corsi on our team. He was even getting into the right areas... He just missed. It happens.
Really, outside of a few bad bounces and a few defensive miscues, Columbus was shut down. Most of their inside opportunities came from one of our defenders getting caught on a pinch once in a while or something like that Dermott bounce at the offensive blue line. Otherwise, they were pretty much just hoping that an Atkinson goal would squeak in. They are not winning many games with heatmaps looking like this, with the vast majority of their shots coming from the outside and above the hash-marks. The Leafs, meanwhile, were forcing their way inside and getting these better opportunities... We just missed or Korpisalo had to make high quality saves.
The Leafs need not get discouraged like most fans are getting discouraged. Nobody expected us to sweep Columbus. Perhaps they expected to win the first game, but the bounces did not go that way this time... Just use it as motivation, keep putting your foot down, and we will score goals and likely win this series.
