Lightning, Maple Leafs must tighten up defensively after latest seesaw affair

TORONTO -- It was a tale of two dressing rooms at Scotiabank Arena on Monday.

Hooting and hollering could be heard in excess on the Toronto side, the result of an improbable 6-5 come-from-behind win, thanks to Calle Jarnkrok’s goal 46 seconds into overtime.

Down the hallway, it was a different story. The doors were shut tight. The Tampa Bay Lightning were holding a team meeting, searching for answers after blowing a 4-1 lead they held 15:13 into the game.

“It’s embarrassing,” despondent Lightning forward Brandon Hagel said.

It was exactly that for both teams at certain points in the game. And, more importantly, it exposed warts for both sides, blemishes that teams looking to make deep runs in the Stanley Cup Playoffs like these two simply cannot have.

In more specific terms, shoddy defensive play and wobbly goaltending, traits Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper knows will end your postseason in a hurry.

“If you want to be playing late in the spring, you can’t be doing that because it’ll be hard to get there,” Cooper said.

After overseeing the Lightning’s back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 2020 and 2021, he would know.

On the surface, the Maple Leafs had reason to celebrate what turned out to be an epic comeback. That’s the glass-half-full side of things.

But to ignore the issues that plagued them in the first period would be naive, not to mention a mistake.

Consider that by the time the horn sounded to end the first period, the hometown fans booed the Maple Leafs off the ice. But when they skated off at the conclusion of the second period, those jeers had been replaced by cheers.

It was that type of roller-coaster night, one that reflected the seasons of each team.

In Tampa Bay’s case, it overcame an early 1-0 deficit by scoring four straight goals in a span of 10:56. That was enough for Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe, who replaced goalie Ilya Samsonov after allowing four goals on 12 shots, with rookie Joseph Woll.

It was an eerily similar situation to the first time the teams met this season at Amalie Arena in Tampa on Oct. 21, in which Samsonov got the hook early on when the Lightning erased a 1-0 deficit with three consecutive first-period goals. Woll stepped in that night and helped the Maple Leafs rally for a 4-3 overtime win courtesy of a John Tavares goal.

Sixteen days later, history pretty much repeated itself. Woll came in, gave the Maple Leafs a boost, and they eventually staged an impressive comeback.

Of course, it didn’t appear the game would play out that way after the first period, given how the Lightning’s big guns were firing through 20 minutes. Forward Nikita Kucherov led the way with four first-period points (two goals, two assists) and defenseman Victor Hedman chipped in with three (one goal, two assists) to help Tampa Bay take a 4-1 lead.

Keefe had a firsthand view of it all. And although he didn’t mind certain aspects of Toronto’s game, he certainly didn’t like the score.

“You come off the bench after the first period, you feel [lousy] … everybody did,” he said.

For forward Mitchell Marner, the message in the first intermission was simple: Don’t get discouraged.

“We don’t have any quit in this locker room,” Marner said. “There’s a lot of trust in this group that, regardless of the situation, we’re never out of any game. But like I’ve said, we don’t want to be in these situations a lot because it won’t happen every night.”

Cue the comeback, thanks in part to Auston Matthews. The Maple Leafs center, coming off his third hat trick of the young season, scored twice in the second period to cut it to 4-3 after 40 minutes. He was particularly animated after his second one at 5:42, thrusting his fist into the air much to the glee of the capacity crowd.

“After the first, the energy and the boos and rightly so, [we] didn’t want them to go to sleep quite yet,” Matthews said.

No one was snoozing in the third.

Goals by Jarnkrok and Marner eight seconds apart put Toronto up 5-4, sending the throng into a frenzy. Hagel temporarily silenced the building by tying it 5-5 at 17:34, but the roar was restored when Jarnkrok gave the Maple Leafs the victory in overtime.

“It was special,” Woll said.

Maybe. But it’s a good bet a struggling Samsonov doesn’t feel that way, especially since Toronto has allowed at least three goals in nine of its 12 games this season.

The Lightning, meanwhile, are also searching for answers. They’ve lost 11 straight overtime games, including five against the Maple Leafs, dating to last season’s Eastern Conference First Round.

Tampa Bay does have room for optimism, with Cooper saying Monday morning that No. 1 goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy could make his return later this month after undergoing back surgery in September.

Nevertheless, as Cooper pointed out, such loose play is not the recipe for success come the postseason. It’s a lesson both teams need to heed moving forward.