Babcock preaches discipline to Maple Leafs for Game 6 against Bruins

TORONTO -- In the world of Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock, the goal of defeating the Boston Bruins in the Eastern Conference First Round can easily be simplified by following one rule.
"Stay out of the penalty box," Babcock said Sunday.

Get used to hearing those words from Babcock. His players are.
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Whether they heed them remains to be seen. If they want to survive this series, they'd better.
The Maple Leafs held on to defeat the Bruins 4-3 in Game 5 on Saturday and narrowed Boston's lead to 3-2 in the best-of-7 series. They'll host Game 6 at Air Canada Centre on Monday (7 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, TVAS, NESN).
The victory certainly came against the flow of play as the Bruins peppered Maple Leafs goalie Frederik Andersen with 45 shots. Any momentum Toronto had accrued by building a 4-1 lead evaporated when the Maple Leafs took the final four minor penalties in the game.
Toronto took a total of eight minors for 16 minutes in the victory; Boston took three for six minutes. In the series, the Maple Leafs have spent 15:11 on the power play; the Bruins 27:25. That means Boston has spent 12:14 more with the man-advantage than Toronto.
Babcock said that trend could foil Toronto's aspirations for a deep run in the 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs, regardless of whether they play at home.
"We enjoy the atmosphere here and we enjoy the opportunity of continuing to play," Babcock said. "We think we had a real good year, [but] if you get in the playoffs and it does not go as good for you, you can be out fast unless you show some resiliency and dig in.
"I'm proud of our group. Now we have to get playing at the level we are capable of playing at and for the whole 60 minutes.
"And stay out of the box."

It was a familiar message from the Maple Leafs coach, who was asked how his team could avoid a disastrous period like Toronto had in the third when it was outshot 20-5.
"Stay out of the penalty box," he repeated.
Isn't there more to it than that?
"Stay out of the penalty box," Babcock said. "We were in there far too often. The game was going perfect, we were up 4-1 and then there was a parade to the box.
"Stay out of the penalty box."
Because the Leafs spent so much time killing penalties, an offensive threat like Auston Matthews played the fewest minutes (15:25) since Game 1 (15:24). He played 18:58 in Game 2; 17:11 in Game 3 and 20:52 in Game 4.
Matthews is not one of the Toronto's regular penalty-killers and is often left sitting on the bench when a lack of discipline results in a glut of penalties.
Matthews had 63 points (34 goals, 29 assists) during the regular season. He has a goal and an assist in this series.
"What happens in those situations to guys who don't kill penalties, they sit there and freeze to death," Babcock said. "I don't know if you've ever been out in a snowstorm or been out (snowmobiling) and if your (snowmobile) runs out of gas, you have to sit there and wait for someone to bring you gas. You just sit there, but you're not allowed to walk around because you might stay warm if you do that.
"You're not involved in the game. So what you have done is you take your team out of it and get no rhythm and now you get on your heels. So we have to do a better job of staying out of the box."
The Bruins have scored six power-play goals on 17 attempts in the series, but they went just 1-for-6 on Saturday. Defenseman Ron Hainsey, 37, deserves significant credit for that; he played 8:06 while Toronto was shorthanded on Saturday and has 21:05 of shorthanded ice time in the series.
"We survived," Hainsey said. "We did what we had to do. It wasn't pretty. Way too much time in our own end once we got the 4-1 lead.
"And way too many penalties, obviously."
Babcock couldn't agree more.