Obviously something is rotten in Toronto, where the Maple Leafs lost another in blowout fashion on Tuesday night 6-1 to the Philadelphia Flyers. Equally important is the team’s star player Auston Matthews says that the team just quit.
Recently the Maple Leafs fired coach Mike Babcock, turning the reigns over to Sheldon Keefe. However, it hasn’t turned around performance for what is considered a talented roster.
Auston Matthews said the Maple Leafs "kind of just quit" in a 6-1 loss at the Flyers, leaving goalie Frederik Andersen "out to dry."https://t.co/a0gcFUpFcs
— NHL.com (@NHLdotcom) December 4, 2019
Furthermore, here’s what Matthews said in the wake of the road loss.
“I think just we just folded, kind of just quit. We just didn’t play to that last buzzer. We can’t be doing that, not to a guy like Freddie, not to our starting goalie. Just have to have a little bit more pride than that.”
Then Matthews stated that the team hung it’s goalie Frederik Andersen out out to dry.
“It’s unacceptable to do that to our starting goalie, the guy that’s stolen games for us. He has been a brick wall for us all year and that’s just unacceptable on our part. We can’t just fold. We’ve got to play to that last minute because that’s just unacceptable. We just left him out to dry. Breakaway, 2-on-1s, odd-man rushes there in the last minute, and suddenly the score is 6-1. That’s on us. It just can’t happen.”
Right now, one has to wonder if the Maple Leafs end up in some kind of sell-mode at some point. In what would be a complete surprise, they hold a 13-12-4 record that has them towards the bottom of their conference standings.
None of this makes any sense. On paper, the Leafs entered the year as one of hockey’s more talented teams. Still it just goes to show that the games are not played on paper, but on the ice. Toronto simply isn’t getting it done at the current time.
