Two teams searching for consistency will try to find answers Tuesday night when the St. Louis Blues visit the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Maple Leafs lost their fifth game in a row on Saturday, 3-2 to the host Chicago Blackhawks, after taking a 2-1 lead into the third period.
“We’re just a little bit unconfident, I’d say, right now,” Toronto coach Craig Berube said. “But we have to get through that, because we’ve had the leads, and we had an opportunity to close this game out, win it. And we get a power play in the third, and we don’t do anything with it, either.”
The Blues finished a 1-1-2 homestand Saturday with a listless 4-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights. Now they are starting a five-game trip.
“I thought we were doing a lot of staring and watching and not enough trying to make plays or kill plays,” St. Louis coach Jim Montgomery said.
A troubling aspect of the Maple Leafs’ struggles is that they had a home-heavy schedule to open the season and are 1-5-0 on the road.
They also are dealing with injuries to key players, with star center Auston Matthews (lower-body injury), goaltender Anthony Stolarz (upper body) and defenseman Chris Tanev (upper body) on injured reserve.
Defenseman Brandon Carlo (lower body) was added to the IR list Monday. Berube said that forward Nicolas Roy (upper body) will not play on Tuesday and forward Scott Laughton (upper body) remains out.
Toronto goaltender Joseph Woll, who missed the early season because of a personal issue, made his first start of the season Saturday and was solid, stopping 29 shots.
“A positive for me was seeing (Woll) back in there,” defenseman Jake McCabe said. “I thought he did a phenomenal job. I just told him it was super good seeing him back in there and grinding and battling, and he was composed all night.”
The result was the same, however. Chicago scored twice in the third period to gain the two points. Toronto led 2-0 early on Thursday against the Los Angeles Kings but failed to hold a 3-2 advantage in the third and took a 4-3 overtime loss at home.
“We’re having a hard time closing games out,” said defenseman Morgan Rielly, who scored Saturday. “When you’re going through a stretch like that, it’s almost self-fulfilling. It’s just little mistakes that are costing us I think overall, the game (Saturday), the way we played, we had some good things going on.”
The Blues have gone 3-7-4 in the last month and lurk near the bottom of the NHL standings.
“We’re not hard enough probably on both ends,” defenseman Justin Faulk said. “Not killing plays in the D-zone, first and foremost. Probably spending too much time letting teams hem us in three-quarter ice. Then at that point, we don’t have anything for a forecheck.
“On the flip side, when we do have the juice for a forecheck, it seems that we’re pretty light. We’re not hemming them in. If we are, we’re perimeter.”
Adjustments could be in order.
“We might need to change the way we play in certain areas,” Montgomery said. “We tried redefining and making sure our habits and details are really good, and after a while, the definition of insanity is trying to keep doing the same thing and not getting good results. So I might need to try different things.”
