Leafs 2 at Penguins 3: Back to Form

After Manchester United slumped to defeat at Anfield two weeks ago on the back of some terrible play, an own goal, and a Ryan Babel winner my cousin turned to me and, summoning up all of his rage, said "Whatever, Manchester United scored two goals today and Liverpool could only get one." While I tried to be the gracious winner I thought I guess that does take some of the sting out of it. So there you go Leafs, you won 4-1! And the rebuild rolls on!

Unfortunately, it was a familiar pattern to last night's game and closer to this recap of Monday night's game than this story. The Leafs once again struggled on special teams. All three goals came while special teams were on the ice. While they passed the puck around more or less nicely on the powerplay they did not create any clear cut chances until late in the third when the game was basically out of reach.

When the teams were at even strength is when it was most apparent that this was the pre-season. Both teams lacked any sort of fire. Even the attempts at creating some fire by Mayers and Newbury fizzled as Bissonette was more interested in smelling Jamal's head and Goligoski was more interested in running away from being held accountable for a hit from behind on Stapleton.

Ultimately, what this game proved was that it is indeed the first week of training camp. As with Monday night's game, while some individual insights can be superficially made any insightful conclusions are a long way from being formed.

The nature of the lineups on both sides meant that there would always be a feeling out process among linemates and opponents. Among the Leafs' aspirants:

• Tim Stapleton might want to look into changing his cursed number since he did a lot to remind viewers of Kyle Wellwood from taking dumb penalties to being mostly invisible.
• Bom-Bom did chip in an assist but it will not do much to change the overall conclusion that in this game at least he looked woefully out of place.
• Frogren eagerly took the body but it cost him a penalty early since it took him out of position. He might want to look at changing from 24 just because of the connotations.
• Stralman might be feeling the knee a bit more than is being let on. He lost his edge pretty easily and had a little less jump than usual. He did however look good blasting some shots on the PP.
• Van Ryn looked good after making a poor clearance on the backhand prior to the first goal.
• Pierre Maguire loved John Mitchell but other than a pretty good shift on the powerplay in the third it seemed like more of a case of not bringing attention to oneself for good or bad reasons.
• Jiri Tlusty showed a few times that he might have found that extra half-stride that he needs. He steamed in shorthanded and set up Mayers nicely although I would have rather seen him take it to the net.
• Ponikarovski did what he needs to do on the PP and that's be annoying in front of the net. It was a nice deflection that got the Leafs on the board.
• Mikhail Grabovski potted a beauty with eleven seconds but he was really struggling to find his rhythm tonight.
• Most importantly, other than when his teammates were channeling the spirit of their departed teammate or abandoning him completely Justin Pogge, the goalie of February, looked very good once again. It was limited action but he was comfortable and his large frame takes away a lot of the net./

All in all, what was on display, as I mentioned, was the process of developing chemistry between linemates. If not for the bad bounces against the Leafs this game would have been 0-0 heading into the third. The team did look more confident in their defensive system but they were not put under nearly the same amount of pressure as the Sabres put on them under.

It will be interesting to see what the papers will say tomorrow because this is definitely a case where people cannot get too low and draw too many broad conclusions from the game. It was one more step in developing the roster and getting all of the new pieces on the same page. At this stage in training camp that's more important than the score and on that note it was a success.

Once again, thanks to the following for participating in the game thread tonight. As the season progresses this will hopefully grow as everything else here has over the past few months. The bigger the group the better the therapy.