Goaltending An Issue For Toronto After Their Fifth Consecutive Loss
from Terry Koshan of the Toronto Sun,
William Nylander showed up on time on Tuesday night.
Not all of his Maple Leafs teammates could make a similar claim.
We’re looking at you, goaltender David Rittich.
After getting a reprieve for missing a team meeting on Monday, Nylander redeemed himself with a couple of assists on two John Tavares goals against the Vancouver Canucks.
As effectively as Nylander played in the offensive zone, Rittich was wretched at the other end, allowing two soft Canucks goals in the third period.
The result was a 6-3 Leafs loss, marking the first time Toronto has lost five in a row since Mike Babcock’s last stand as Leafs coach. The Leafs had lost six consecutive games when Babcock was fired on Nov. 20, 2019, and won its first three under Sheldon Keefe.
The fall on Tuesday came 48 hours after the Leafs lost 3-2 in overtime to the Canucks, a loss that included a couple of weak goals on Jack Campbell.
“I’m concerned about our goaltending,” Keefe said. “We got to get that sorted out. I’m not concerned about our team. I believe in our group. We played well enough to win, we played well enough to win the other night. But we got to get better goaltending to give our group confidence.”
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Below are the game highlights....
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