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Maple Leafs Takeaways: ‘Ideal display of hockey’ leads to best game yet – Sportsnet.ca

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One week ago things were pretty pessimistic in Leafs Land.

Must have been a day that ended with a “y”.

There were bumps in the road over the first three weeks. And after a three-game losing streak where the Maple Leafs dropped games to a tired San Jose Sharks squad, got humiliated by a Pittsburgh Penguins team without any of its stars in the lineup, and then outclassed in an “eye-opening” loss to their former goaltender and the Carolina Hurricanes, the Maple Leafs were surrounded by well-earned doubts from the outside.

Some of the same old problems were present. Shoddy defensive play, top players not pulling through on offence, and a power play that was inconceivably inefficient.

“I think that noise and that panic from the outside can’t shake us — because there’s no reason it should. It’s still early, and we’re still trying to figure out our game,” Auston Matthews said last Tuesday.

The Leafs ended that stretch of losses with back-to-back wins, but even those came with caveats.

They beat the Blackhawks. Ya, but Chicago didn’t have Patrick Kane. They beat the Red Wings. Ya, but Detroit didn’t have Tyler Bertuzzi. They won two games in a row! Ya, but the Hawks and Wings should be soft touches for a contender anyway.

This week was setting up to be a stretch of measurement stick tests for the Leafs, on par with that Carolina game, with Vegas, Tampa and Boston all rolling through Scotiabank Arena.

Vegas arrived with a slew of its stars out to injury as well, and William Karlsson was the latest addition to that list with a broken foot. The Maple Leafs dominated a 4-0 decision for their third win in a row Tuesday night, against a Vegas lineup that included recent waiver claim and former Leafs healthy scratch Michael Amadio.

Though it might be tempting to look over Vegas’ Tuesday lineup and asterisk this win as well, there were some meaningful positives to take away from the victory — the best full effort from the Maple Leafs through their first 10 games.

“Right from the start we took control of the game and I thought we maintained that all the way through,” head coach Sheldon Keefe said after his team’s cleanest performance of the season.

“We were good on special teams. Good goaltending. So ya it’s certainly more indicative of what we think we’re capable of. That’s a shorthanded team playing over there, but as we all know we’ve played against shorthanded teams before and it hasn’t gone like this here today. I thought we did what we needed to do here tonight.”

A FULL 60 MINUTES

Last week’s win over Chicago came after the Leafs dug a two-goal first period deficit and were rallied in the dressing room by passionate intermission speeches. On Saturday’s win against Detroit the Leafs couldn’t pull away from three separate two-goal leads and won a narrow 5-4 decision.

But Toronto didn’t let off the pedal against Vegas’ depleted roster. They took an early lead on Mitch Marner’s spectacularly silky goal, outchanced the Golden Knights by 20 at 5-on-5 and left Jack Campbell with a relatively simple clean up job for his first shutout of the season, turning aside 26 shots.

“I think just really complete from start to finish,” Auston Matthews said. “Just really good energy. I don’t think we gave them too much around our net, too many opportunities. Obviously ‘Soup’ played unbelievable. I think all four lines kept rolling all night. I think that’s an ideal display of hockey we’d like to play.”

Through two periods the Maple Leafs held an 11-3 advantage in high-danger, slot areas chances at 5-on-5, which Vegas clawed back at only a little in a desperate third period. Toronto owned the key areas and opportunities from start to finish.

The Nylander-Matthews-Bunting line which Sheldon Keefe said hadn’t played to its potential yet earlier in the day outshot the competition 10-6 at 5-on-5 and scored their first goal as a unit. The Kerfoot-Tavares-Marner second line continued its two-way dominance, outshooting the Knights 9-2 and outchancing them 10-0.

“I just love their start and the way we played for the full 60 minutes,” Jack Campbell said. “It always gives you a lot of confidence when we start that way. We get on the scoreboard early, heck of a play by Mitchy and the team took off from there, it was great.”

SPECIAL TEAMS A POSITIVE

The power play has been an unlikely sore spot for a star-studded unit dating back to last season and entered Tuesday’s contest ranked in the bottom-third of the league in 2021-22.

The Leafs were only given one man advantage against the Golden Knights in a decidedly un-chippy evening, but it came early in the second period when they held just a 1-0 lead. Miss on that opportunity and maybe Vegas finds a way to hang around; score on it and the flow of momentum continues to favour the Leafs.

Matthews, given a wide-open shot off a deceptive pass from Nylander, scored the type of goal we’ve seen so often from him. A goal scorer’s catch and release.

The penalty kill was equally as impressive, going a perfect 3-for-3 against Vegas’ own struggling power-play unit. The Leafs, in fact, had more scoring chances (5) on their one power play than Vegas (3) did on their three man-advantage opportunities. Heck, the Leafs’ penalty kill generated as many chances as Vegas’ power play.

“I thought the power play in the one opportunity we got really snapped it around well and really hunt pucks and got pucks back and just kept creating chances,” Matthews said.

Toronto’s power play is now two for its past three opportunities after going 0-for its previous 17 over two weeks.

BREAKTHROUGH GAME FOR THE CORE STARS

The major narrative following this year’s Leafs is how they’ve doubled, even tripled, down on the “Core 4” forwards after past playoff failures. We can talk about how the new third line has been a positive shot driver, how Alex Kerfoot is obviously a better fit on the wing, or how well Campbell has played in the crease, but the Leafs will only go as far as the big guys will take them.

Part of the reason for the team’s bumpy start was that their big tickets weren’t paying off yet.

Matthews had one goal in his first six games. Marner had one point in his first seven games and wasn’t quite playing like himself, perhaps forcing the issue on offence a little. William Nylander came in to Tuesday’s game with two points over his previous six games.

They all showed up against the vulnerable Golden Knights.

Marner’s goal will be on your highlights Wednesday, but don’t forget the two assists he also added to this stat line for his first multi-point game of the year. Marner led the charge on the penalty kill as well and nearly broke out a couple of high-quality chances down a man. That’s now three solid performances in a row to follow a gripping-the-stick-too-tight first few weeks.

“He just looks like himself,” Keefe said. “That’s the Mitch we know and love, of course. He’s playing with confidence, he looks like he’s free out there. When he’s free and the game is just flowing for him, he makes great things happen on both sides of the puck.”

Matthews scored the aforementioned power-play marker to give the Leafs a two-goal lead and added a second goal in the final minute of the second period to keep the Golden Knights on the mat. He led the Leafs with six shots. Nylander had five shots himself, scored the final Leafs goal after being sprung by Bunting’s pass, and added an assist, too.

“I thought it was evident early in the game for Matthews and Nylander and Bunting, that line, I thought they had a little extra jump in their step right from the very beginning,” Keefe noted. “The Tavares line continued their momentum, they scored us a huge goal again here tonight to get us moving”.

The spreadsheets (and, you know, common sense) indicated this was inevitable. Here is the danger of drawing sweeping new conclusions too early.

Of course, this group of leaders will face far more defining moments than a Tuesday night in November. But this was a start.

The Leafs face another stiff test Thursday against the Tampa Bay Lightning who will be without their top star Nikita Kucherov and sit tied with the Leafs at 11 points in the Atlantic Division. The result against Vegas’ scraped-together lineup isn’t especially meaningful in a vacuum, but the takeaways are positive and timely. What happens next may be the better measure of impact, though.

One strong, full-game effort needs to lead to another for it to mean anything in the long-term.

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Soccer legend Christine Sinclair says goodbye in Vancouver |

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Christine Sinclair scored one final goal at B.C. Place, helping the Portland Thorns to a 6-0 victory over the Whitecaps Girls Elite team. The soccer legend has announced she’ll retire from professional soccer at the end of the National Women’s Soccer League season. (Oct. 16, 2024)

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A German in charge of England? Nationality matters less than it used to in international soccer

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The question was inevitable.

At his first news conference as England’s newly appointed head coach, Thomas Tuchel – a German – was asked on Wednesday what message he had for fans who would have preferred an Englishman in charge of their beloved national team.

“I’m sorry, I just have a German passport,” he said, laughing, and went on to profess his love for English football and the country itself. “I will do everything to show respect to this role and to this country.”

The soccer rivalry between England and Germany runs deep and it’s likely Tuchel’s passport will be used against him if he doesn’t deliver results for a nation that hasn’t lifted a men’s trophy since 1966. But his appointment as England’s third foreign coach shows that, increasingly, even the top countries in the sport are abandoning the long-held belief that the national team must be led by one of their own.

Four of the top nine teams in the FIFA world rankings now have foreign coaches. Even in Germany, a four-time World Cup winner which has never had a foreign coach, candidates such as Dutchman Louis van Gaal and Austrian Oliver Glasner were considered serious contenders for the top job before the country’s soccer federation last year settled on Julian Nagelsmann, who is German.

“The coaching methods are universal and there for everyone to apply,” said German soccer researcher and author Christoph Wagner, whose recent book “Crossing the Line?” historically addresses Anglo-German rivalry. “It’s more the personality that counts and not the nationality. You could be a great coach, and work with a group of players who aren’t perceptive enough to get your methods.”

Not everyone agrees.

English soccer author and journalist Jonathan Wilson said it was “an admission of failure” for a major soccer nation to have a coach from a different country.

“Personally, I think it should be the best of one country versus the best of another country, and that would probably extend to coaches as well as players,” said Wilson, whose books include “Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics.”

“To say we can’t find anyone in our country who is good enough to coach our players,” he said, “I think there is something slightly embarrassing, slightly distasteful about that.”

That sentiment was echoed by British tabloid The Daily Mail, which reported on Tuchel’s appointment with the provocative headline “A Dark Day for England.”

While foreign coaches are often found in smaller countries and those further down the world rankings, they are still a rarity among the traditional powers of the game. Italy, another four-time world champion, has only had Italians in charge. All of Spain’s coaches in its modern-day history have been Spanish nationals. Five-time World Cup winner Brazil has had only Brazilians in charge since 1965, and two-time world champion France only Frenchmen since 1975.

And it remains the case that every World Cup-winning team, since the first tournament in 1930, has been coached by a native of that country. The situation is similar for the women’s World Cup, which has never been won by a team with a foreign coach, though Jill Ellis, who led the U.S. to two trophies, is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in England.

Some coaches have made a career out of jumping from one national team to the next. Lars Lagerbäck, 76, coached his native Sweden between 2000-09 and went on to lead the national teams of Nigeria, Iceland and Norway.

“I couldn’t say I felt any big difference,” Lagerbäck told The Associated Press. “I felt they were my teams and the people’s teams.”

For Lagerbäck, the obvious disadvantages of coaching a foreign country were any language difficulties and having to adapt to a new culture, which he particularly felt during his brief time with Nigeria in 2010 when he led the African country at the World Cup.

Otherwise, he said, “it depends on the results” — and Lagerbäck is remembered with fondness in Iceland, especially, after leading the country to Euro 2016 for its first ever international tournament, where it knocked out England in the round of 16.

Lagerbäck pointed to the strong education and sheer number of coaches available in soccer powers like Spain and Italy to explain why they haven’t needed to turn to an overseas coach. At this year’s European Championship, five of the coaches were from Italy and the winning coach was Luis de la Fuente, who was promoted to Spain’s senior team after being in charge of the youth teams.

Portugal for the first time looked outside its own borders or Brazil, with which it has historical ties, when it appointed Spaniard Roberto Martinez as national team coach last year. Also last year, Brazil tried — and ultimately failed — to court Real Madrid’s Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti, with Brazilian soccer federation president Ednaldo Rodrigues saying: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a foreigner or a Brazilian, there’s no prejudice about the nationality.”

The United States has had a long list of foreign coaches before Mauricio Pochettino, the Argentine former Chelsea manager who took over as the men’s head coach this year.

The English Football Association certainly had no qualms making Tuchel the national team’s third foreign-born coach, after Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson (2001-06) and Italian Fabio Capello (2008-12), simply believing he was the best available coach on the market.

Unlike Eriksson and Capello, Tuchel at least had previous experience of working in English soccer — he won the Champions League in an 18-month spell with Chelsea — and he also speaks better English.

That won’t satisfy all the nay-sayers, though.

“Hopefully I can convince them and show them and prove to them that I’m proud to be the English manager,” Tuchel said.

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AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire in Paris contributed to this story.

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Maple Leafs winger Bobby McMann finding game after opening-night scratch

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TORONTO – Bobby McMann watched from the press box on opening night.

Just over a week later, the Maple Leafs winger took a twirl as the first star.

McMann went from healthy scratch to unlikely offensive focal point in just eight days, putting up two goals in Toronto’s 6-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday.

The odd man out at the Bell Centre against the Montreal Canadiens, he’s slowly earning the trust of first-year head coach Craig Berube.

“There’s a lot of good players on this team,” McMann said of his reaction to sitting out Game 1. “Maybe some guys fit better in certain scenarios than others … just knowing that my opportunity would come.”

The Wainwright, Alta., product skated on the second line with William Nylander and Max Domi against Los Angeles, finishing with those two goals, three hits and a plus-3 rating in just over 14 minutes of work.

“He’s been unbelievable,” said Nylander, who’s tied with McMann for the team lead with three goals. “It’s great when a player like that comes in.”

The 28-year-old burst onto the scene last February when he went from projected scratch to hat-trick hero in a single day after then-captain John Tavares fell ill.

McMann would finish 2023-24 with 15 goals and 24 points in 56 games before a knee injury ruled him out of Toronto’s first-round playoff loss to the Boston Bruins.

“Any time you have success, it helps the confidence,” he said. “But I always trust the abilities and trust that they’re there whether things are going in or (I’m not) getting points. Just trying to play my game and trust that doing the little things right will pay off.”

McMann was among the Leafs’ best players against the Kings — and not just because of what he did on the scoresheet. The forward got into a scuffle with Phillip Danault in the second period before crushing Mikey Anderson with a clean hit in the third.

“He’s a power forward,” Berube said. “That’s how he should think the game, night in and night out, as being a power forward with his skating and his size. He doesn’t have to complicate the game.”

Leafs goaltender Anthony Stolarz knew nothing about McMann before joining Toronto in free agency over the summer.

“Great two-way player,” said the netminder. “Extremely physical and moves really well, has a good shot. He’s a key player for us in our depth. I was really happy for him to get those two goals.

“Works his butt off.”

ON TARGET

Leafs captain Auston Matthews, who scored 69 times last season, ripped his first goal of 2024-25 after going without a point through the first three games.

“It’s not going to go in every night,” said Matthews, who added two assists against the Kings. “It’s good to see one fall … a little bit of the weight lifted off your shoulders.”

WAKE-UP CALL

Berube was animated on the bench during a third-period timeout after the Kings cut a 5-0 deficit to 5-2.

“Taking care of the puck, being harder in our zone,” Matthews said of the message. “There were times in the game, early in the second, in the third period, where the momentum shifted and we needed to grab it back.”

PATCHES SITS

Toronto winger Max Pacioretty was a healthy scratch after dressing the first three games.

“There’s no message,” Berube said of the 35-year-old’s omission. “We have extra players and not everybody can play every night. That’s the bottom line. He’s been fine when he’s played, but I’ve got to make decisions as a coach, and I’m going to make those decisions — what I think is best for the team.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

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