Maple Leafs searching for answers following Game 2 loss to Bruins

BOSTON --Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan was making a beeline for the exit door at TD Garden seconds after the final horn sounded on Saturday. He didn't wait to hear the announcement of the Three Stars in the Boston Bruins dominant
7-3 victory in Game 2
of the Eastern Conference First Round. He didn't have to.
Like everyone else in the building, he knew who at least two of them would be.

When a line lights up your team like David Pastrnak, Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand did, chances are you can figure it out on your own.
RELATED: [Pastrnak dazzles for Bruins | Complete Bruins vs. Maple Leafs series coverage]
What will be more difficult for the Maple Leafs to figure out is how to stop them. Thus far, they haven't come close.
Pastrnak, with three goals and three assists, was named First Star, and Marchand, with four assists, was picked Second Star. Bergeron also had four assists, giving the line 14 points. Third Star went to Bruins defenseman Kevan Miller, who had a goal, seven hits and three blocked shots.
The Bruins have a 2-0 lead in the best-of-7 series, with Game 3 at Air Canada Centre on Monday (7 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, TVAS, NESN).
Coupled with a 5-1 victory in Game 1, Pastrnak (four goals, five assists), Marchand (one goal, five assists) and Bergeron (five assists) have combined for 20 points, leaving the Maple Leafs in search of a solution.
Asked if he'd ever seen a line score 20 points in two games, Toronto defenseman Morgan Rielly sarcastically quipped: "I just did."
Forward Auston Matthews was irked as well. Toronto's first line of Matthews, William Nylander and Leo Komarov have been held without a point.
"[Stuff] happens in hockey," Matthews said when a reporter compared the points differential between the two first lines.
Toronto coach Mike Babcock won the Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings in 2008, coached Canada to a gold medal at the 2010 and 2014 Olympics and the championship at the World Cup of Hockey in 2016. In all that time, having a line score 20 points in two games against one of his teams is a first.

"No, I've never [seen it before]," he said. "And if I had, I'd try to block it out of my mind, probably. Unless it was my own team.
"Obviously, they're dominating us. I thought we got off to a pretty good start, and the puck still went in the net. Give them credit, they're playing real well, that line, they've been good on the power play, good at 5-on-5, everything they throw at the net's going in.
"We've got to go home and get regrouped. So that's our first priority. We've got to go home, get out of here. I mean, it obviously hasn't gone the way we want it, we've given up 12 goals in two games, so we've got to go get some home cooking tomorrow, and come back and pull like we can, because we're a way better team than what we showed."
How they accomplish that remains to be seen.
Among the many warts Babcock needs to his address is the Maple Leafs' sagging penalty kill. Toronto has allowed 11 power-play goals in its past seven games, dating to the regular season, including five goals in 10 opportunities to the Bruins.
Staying out of the penalty box would be an obvious solution but the Maple Leafs continue to have difficulties on that front. They have taken a too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty in each of the first two games, and minors that come from mental mistakes, not physical ones.
"Too many penalties, too much zone time for them, it would be hard to pick just one thing that's gone wrong. It's many things," defenseman Ron Hainsey said. "We were outplayed for two games. If you add it up, it's 12-4 over six periods. We deserved every bit of criticism far and wide.
"Good news is, story's not totally written yet. We've got some work to do tomorrow to look after what happened here tonight, and continue to improve, and we can try and change the story come Monday night."

Komarov sustained a lower-body injury in the second period. Toronto also was without forward Nazem Kadri, who was serving the first game of his three-game suspension for his hit on Bruins forward Tommy Wingels in Game 1.
Babcock admitted the domination of the Bruins in this series could affect the confidence of his young Maple Leafs moving forward.
"Absolutely, 100 percent," he said. "But in saying all that, you spend your whole year working on your confidence. We got 105 points for a reason. We've got a good team. So you know, we're not going to talk about it tonight, there's no sense. Obviously no one's listening to anything anyway.
"What we'll do is we'll fly back, we won't practice tomorrow but we'll get together, we'll regroup, and count on our leadership group to help out as well, and get ourselves on track. And obviously our fans will be in our building and they'll all be behind us. We've got to get off to a good start in our building."