LEAFS-BRUINS TAKEAWAYS: Scraping out a point in Beantown

We wouldn’t necessarily say the Leafs were lucky to get a point.

However, they certainly were not the better team, and had it not been for some Mitch Marner wizardry, Toronto wouldn’t have required overtime to lose.

Marner assisted on all three Leafs goals, including a great pass to captain Auston Matthews to tie the game at 18:43 of the third. Matthews drove to the net and re-directed a Marner feed past Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman as Toronto had an extra skater.

A turnover by Matthews in overtime, though, led to the OT winner by Bruins captain Brad Marchand. Neither Marner nor Morgan Rielly could recover in time after Matthews threw the puck across open ice in the defensive zone. Marchand eventually lifted the puck over sprawled Leafs goalie Anthony Stolarz.

After winning three of their first four games in the Craig Berube era, the Leafs have lost four of their past five.

They were better in Boston than they were against Columbus and St. Louis, but does that really tell us much? They have couldn’t have been that poor for three games in a row.

Still, mistakes are being made and there hasn’t been the kind of proper defensive-zone coverage that we saw in the first six games.

“Getting the point is big for us,” Matthews told media in Boston. “Proud of the group.

“It’s Game 9, right? It takes time. It’s not going to click perfectly right away. You want to take positive steps in the right direction. I thought tonight was competitively much better than the previous two.”

Said Morgan Rielly: “I think (learning to play how Berube wants) is going to be an ongoing thing for us. I don’t think it’s an issue right now. It’s a matter of being able to adapt.”

The power play again was pitiful, going 0-for-3 to hit 3-for-30 on the season. And the Leafs couldn’t get much going at five-on-five, as they were outshot 25-15 in the 44 minutes 10 seconds that the teams played at full strength.

Consider, too, that the Bruins had lost their previous two games and were outscored 9-2. That didn’t matter as Boston extended its winning streak to eight against Toronto in the regular season.

As for the power play, there’s no innovation on the part of assistant coach Marc Savard. Toronto continues to have trouble on zone entries, and when it did control the puck once it advanced past the Boston blue line, sustaining pressure and getting chances was a challenge.

Rielly was back on the top unit in place of Oliver Ekman-Larsson, but the result was no different.

It’s time for Savard — and perhaps Berube might want to get in on this — to spread some of the Leafs’ talent around, and not have Matthews, Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares all on the top unit. Have two on one unit and two on the other. It’s not an outlandish suggestion and we’re not the first to make it. If the Leafs are serious about getting it to work, there has to be a change made here. With the Leafs’ talent, there should be a lot more success on the power play. Truth be told, it’s an issue that stretches back to the latter months of the 2023-24 season.

Apparently, Berube sees it differently.

“It’ll come,” Berube said after the game. “I’m confident in this team and they’re going to get it going.”

On Saturday, the Leafs couldn’t score when they had a two-man advantage for 31 seconds midway through the first period. A goal at that time might have changed the course of the game and put another point in the Leafs’ pocket.

The power play isn’t bound to get much better when the two-game trip concludes on Monday in Winnipeg against the Jets.

In going 8-0-0 to start the season, including a 5-3 win in Calgary against the Flames on Saturday, the Jets have killed off 14 of 16 minors for a success rate of 87.5% on the kill.