Maple Leafs Fans Voiced Frustration by Booing Team During Loss to Coyotes
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For the second time in four games this season, the Maple Leafs fell to a lesser opponent. This time in front of fans at Scotiabank Arena, who are seemingly done giving their team the benefit of the doubt.
When the Toronto Maple Leafs dropped their season-opening game against the Montreal Canadiens, head coach Sheldon Keefe wasted no time in calling out his team’s performance.
“For what we’ve been through as an organization, that was unacceptable,” he said.
While Keefe later admitted there were some words exchanged with his team following the game, the Leafs were at least spared the wrath of their home crowd.
But not on Monday.
Toronto fell 4-2 to the Arizona Coyotes. They started well out of the gate and at one point had a shift where they spent upwards of 2.5 minutes in the opponent’s attack zone.
The crowd cheered as their team went for a player change.
And then the Leafs disappeared.
“I thought that shift lulled us to sleep,” Keefe said.
For the remainder of the opening frame, the Leafs had the puck but didn’t do much with it. Nick Ritchie, much maligned for his brief tenure in Toronto, scored the game’s first goal on the power play to put Arizona up 1-0.
Midway through the second period, the Leafs were loose in their own zone when Christian Fischer jumped in from the slot and beat Toronto goaltender Erik Kallgren to give the Coyotes a 2-0 lead.
Arizona, had an expected goals rate of 74 percent according to NaturalStatTrick.com in the second period and the optics of that effort was reflected on the eye test, too.
When the horn sounded to signify the start of the second intermission, the Scotiabank Arena crowd booed the Leafs on their way to the dressing room.
“You could tell of the fans frustrations throughout the game,” Mitch Marner said. “For us we can’t get frustrated through it that we stay to our process and bear down.”
To Toronto’s credit they ended up erasing the two-goal deficit before allowing the game-winning goal to Arizona’s Shayne Gostisbehere.
Toronto thought they had an equalizer from Alex Kerfoot late in the third period, but a league-initiated review determined that officials missed a stoppage when Morgan Rielly batted down a puck and Marner took possession shortly after.
But none of what happened in the third period erases a pivotal point of frustration put forth by the fans.
Only down two goals and 20 minutes left to play, that was enough for fans to let the Leafs have it.
“Yeah, it is what it is,” Rielly said. “I think we all felt it.”
Toronto was -550 on the betting line, an overwhelming favorite to win the game, but have had a hard time having their top players execute.
“The difference between us and Arizona is we have elite players and our elite players didn’t play like elite players today,” Keefe said.
The justification for Toronto to keep the core of their team mostly unchanged from last season made sense on the surface. They set franchise records for wins (54) and points (115) last season.
But during those times, there were games like the one in Montreal and against Arizona on Monday that pointed out some flaws. The inability for players to clear the puck out of their own zone at critical times burned them again, particularly on Gostisbehere’s goal when Justin Holl turned the puck over.
Success in the playoffs has eluded the Maple Leafs. There weren’t fans in the building in 2020 or 2021 (with the exception 550 health care workers in Game 7 of their 2021 playoff exit against the Montreal Canadiens).
They ran it back for the 2021-22 season and put forth a good showing against the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lighting, but still lost in Game 7.
They’ve run it back again, But now they are squarely under the microscope of an overheated fanbase.
After five consecutive opening-round playoff exits with this core and a team that is mostly the same from year-to-year, fans are setting the tone early that a sub-par effort won’t be tolerated.
And they’re right to do.