Maple Leafs 4, Flames 1 post-game embers: Struggling with depth

Wow that was not pretty at all, eh?

The Flames were so poor in their own zone, it’s honestly getting impressive. They looked much better in Colorado, so we know they’re capable of playing better than this – better than the constant turnovers in their own end resulting in goals against, better than failed clears resulting in goals against – so I guess the question, now, is why they keep falling back to these horrible habits that are getting them killed.

Let’s be fair to Mike Smith here: he got beat by some fluke bounces, and that was after a number of rather impressive saves. But those fluke bounces were only able to happen because the Flames basically willed it so by, you know, turning the puck over and failing to clear it. They couldn’t get any fluke bounces of their own because the Leafs were that much better than them.

I guess maybe some of the blame can fall on this being the first game back at home from a long road trip – anecdotally that’s a trap game; statistically, I’m not so sure – but quite frankly, we’re seeing the same stupid habits over and over, so I’m not sure how much you can really blame on jet lag.

Who’s that on? The coach? The veteran players who should know how to play in this league by now, no matter who the bench boss is?

Or is it just the roster construction as a whole?

There was a pretty clear corsi divide last night. The top two lines and the top defence pairing were all above 50%. Everyone else was below 50%. It certainly didn’t help that Kris Versteeg and Jaromir Jagr were unavailable, and if losing those two is all it takes to throw half of the roster into chaos then there is a serious depth problem here.

Hooray, the forward units are all made up of players who can actually skate now! No more goons! That was the smallest of all steps that could have been taken forward and maybe that we’re only just now there speaks to the overhype of this forward group.

I guess the one negative narrative out of this for Toronto is that Auston Matthews, for the first time ever, didn’t record a shot in an NHL game. He primarily faced Sean Monahan’s line. The top group is capable of competing with the best of them.

And then there was everyone else. You can see it in the ice time divide: nobody on the fourth line even got a sniff of 10 minutes; everyone on the top six got at least 18.

So Johnny Gaudreau, still one of the top scorers in the NHL, was held without a point two games in a row for the first time this season. The Flames didn’t look like they were developing too many scoring chances on the whole – the best one probably came from the 3M line – but Gaudreau not scoring is, apparently, a rather big problem.

Not for him. He’s doing fine. But he isn’t going to have multi-point nights every night (only about half of them, judging by his season so far), and when he and his linemates aren’t doing it… who is?

The game’s 5v5 shot heat map, via Natural Stat Trick:

The Flames straight up didn’t even try in some places. Frederik Andersen has the heaviest workload in the NHL so far this season and they didn’t make him work for this one.

The powerplay looked like it was turning a corner. Mostly because Monahan scored a hat trick that one time, but I digress. And you know what? It’s technically still a top 10 powerplay in the NHL.

Versteeg and Jagr are regulars on units one and two, respectively, though. And it looked like the Flames were missing them.

I’m not sure what the strategy here is. Four forwards each got a minute on the powerplay: Michael Frolik, Troy Brouwer, Mark Jankowski, and Sam Bennett. It was like, let’s throw everything to the wall, see what sticks, oh well nothing stuck, let’s throw more stuff. I guess, if anything, this harkens back to the depth problem the Flames are displaying: lose Versteeg? Lose Jagr? Who else on your bottom six can do anything? … Nobody? Okay, apparently nobody.

Man, watching that game made me feel as listless as the Flames looked.

So here’s a fun exercise, since a lot of y’all are calling for Gulutzan’s head in the comment. Let’s say he’s gone today. Who do you replace him with? The only joke answer I’ll accept is Jagr.

Because let’s face it: there are some obvious issues, top to bottom. And one quick firing isn’t going to solve top to bottom issues. Especially if you have nobody to actually replace him with.