海角社区官网

鈥淚t鈥檚 an active investigation. I don鈥檛 know if I should be commenting on that now,鈥� said Green, smirk firmly in place.

Green was kidding, of course. Such was the nonsecrecy around the 鈥渋nvestigation鈥� that in the course of the coach鈥檚 Friday press conference he essentially gave up the goods. He essentially acknowledged that, just as a snippet of online video had suggested, Senators fourth-liner Nick Cousins had indeed sent at least one puck in Stolarz鈥檚 direction. Cousins and Stolarz, as it turns out, played in the minors together as fellow draftees of the Philadelphia Flyers and were Stanley Cup-winning teammates last spring with the Florida Panthers. Green even acknowledged that he鈥檇 talked to Cousins about the incident.

鈥�(Cousins) said, 鈥業 know (Stolarz), game within a game.鈥� Happens probably a lot more than you think,鈥� Green said.

For all that, there鈥檚 a reason the league fined the Senators $25,000 (U.S.) and Cousins the maximum allowable $2,083.33 in the hours after Green spoke. The NHL has a long history of bad things happening when opponents spend warm-ups crossing the red line, either by foot or by shot. It was nearly 40 years ago that an epic brawl broke out in warm-ups before a conference final game between the Montreal Canadiens and Philadelphia Flyers, after the Canadiens defied threats of retribution and shot a pre-game puck into the Flyers net, as was their custom. That led the league to stiffen punishments for bench-clearing yard sales.

What happened here Thursday, before the Leafs took a 3-0 stranglehold on this first-round series with a second straight 3-2 overtime win, wasn鈥檛 even the embryonic form of a 1980s-style brouhaha.

Still, you鈥檇 be naive to believe there wasn鈥檛 an intended purpose to the nonsense, delusional or otherwise. Green as much as telegraphed it. Cousins was trying to play a game within a game. He was engaging in gamesmanship before the game.

In other words: The Senators might as well shoot at Toronto鈥檚 net in warm-ups. They鈥檙e certainly not having a lot of luck during the game.

That鈥檚 the stark truth about this series. The Senators are outshooting and out-attempting the Leafs by a significant margin, which has prompted Green to muse about how his team is winning the 鈥渁nalytics鈥� battle. But to what end? About 33 per cent of Ottawa鈥檚 shot attempts have been blocked by the Leafs, who鈥檝e been committed to stepping in front of pucks all year. Another 28 per cent have missed the net entirely, which might speak to a team getting too cute trying to beat a dominant goaltender. And as for the 39 per cent of attempts that have actually reached Stolarz聽鈥� well, he鈥檚 stopped an elite 93 per cent of those.

You don鈥檛 need to do any math to know the result of all that: The offence-starved Senators have scored exactly two goals in each game of this series. And averaging two goals a game in the playoffs, as the Leafs can tell you from recent experience, will get you a quick ticket to Cancun.

None of that鈥檚 a surprise. The Senators were the , largely relying on their league-leading knack for drawing penalties to drum up offence on the power play. So long as the Leafs stay out of the box聽鈥� a challenge, no doubt, given the gifted provocateurs on the other side聽鈥� it鈥檚 hard to imagine Ottawa mounting a credible rally here.

For all that, nobody in the Leafs dressing room with a clue wants to draw this out. Certainly nobody in 海角社区官网needs to be reminded that the Shanaplan Leafs are 1-11 with a chance to eliminate a playoff opponent. Or maybe they do need to be reminded.

If this iteration of the Core Four era wants to prove things have changed, a clean and decisive end to this series would be a good start. On Friday, Leafs coach Craig Berube was asked if 鈥渒iller instinct鈥� could be learned. Killer instinct, of course, is the elusive quality team president Brendan Shanahan acknowledged his core group lacked but could one day develop, after the Leafs whiffed on three straight attempts to eliminate the Canadiens in the first round in 2021. 海角社区官网has won one playoff series since then, and now Berube is in charge of teaching the skill.

鈥淵ou can learn and apply it,鈥� said the 海角社区官网coach. Which is to say, Toronto鈥檚 latest exam on the difficult subject begins shortly after 7 p.m. on Saturday night.