Stolarz pulled, Laughton hurt in Maple Leafs’ loss to Bruins

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The Maple Leafs lapsed into bad habits, their starting goaltender acknowledged he has not been good enough this season and Scott Laughton got hurt.

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Other than that, how was the Leafs’ night on Saturday?

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A 5-3 loss to the Boston Bruins at Scotiabank Arena undid the good that Leafs put forth in a win against Utah three nights earlier.

There’s more, as there always seems to be with this Leafs team.

Three takeaways from the loss that ended the Leafs’ three-game winning streak, and one that dropped them out of a playoff spot in the competitive Atlantic Division:

STOLARZ OWNS UP

For the first time with the Leafs, Anthony Stolarz was pulled because of performance.

He was gone after giving up four goals on 19 shots, including a goal on each of the Bruins’ first two shots of the game.

The Leafs will say that Stolarz has been great and doing his job — Bobby McMann was the latest to go down that road after the game — but it’s not true.

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Stolarz has an .889 save percentage through 12 games, going 6-5-1.

“It’s not up to par,” Stolarz said of his overall performance. “It seems like every now (and then) I’m giving up one or two you want back.

“For me, it’s the life of the goalie. You have to put it behind you, just focus on the next game and hopefully get back in practice, work on a few things and tighten it up.”

Stolarz’s struggles come after he led the National Hockey League with a .926 save percentage last season, though he did not have a heavy workload in playing in 34 games.

With Joseph Woll’s absence, Stolarz has been asked to do more. Here’s something that’s worrisome: Stolarz said after the game that his body feels good and that he made a point during the summer to prepare to play more often in 2025-26. The extra work hasn’t added up to the proper results.

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The Bruins’ Morgan Geekie and Viktor Arvidsson scored 20 seconds apart in the first period to give the visitors a 2-1 lead. Early in the second period, the Bruins scored twice in a span of two minutes 26 seconds. The fourth goal came from David Pastrnak after he embarrassed Simon Benoit with a deke.

That was it for Stolarz. In came Dennis Hildeby, who stopped 19 of 20 shots. Only former Leafs prospect Fraser Minten, with three minutes left, beat him.

“First and foremost, I have to bear down and make a save,” Stolarz said. “Giving up the first two shots is not a good way to start the game. When you give a team like that a couple of freebies, it’s going to be a tough hill to climb back from.

“(Hildeby) was awesome. I put him in a (tough) situation, but he came in, handled it like a true pro and played well.”

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Leafs coach Craig Berube wouldn’t say whether Stolarz or Hildeby will start on Sunday night at home against the Carolina Hurricanes.

What is Berube’s view on Stolarz?

“There’s a lot of good, but inconsistent like our team, that’s what I see,” Berube said.

Any reason why the goaltending as a whole has not been as good as last season?

“I don’t feel we’re as tight defensively as we were last year,” Berube said. “There’s good stretches of it, but not enough.”

Woll, meanwhile, stopped 21 of 24 shots he faced in the Toronto Marlies’ 3-2 loss on Saturday night in Lehigh Valley. It was Woll’s first game action after returning to the Leafs following a leave of absence for personal reasons.

“He made some big saves when he needed to,” Marlies coach John Gruden told media in Pennsylvania. “I thought he looked really good.”

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DEFENSIVE LAPSES KILL

The Leafs were good against the Mammoth on Wednesday after a rallying third period propelled them to a win against Pittsburgh on Monday.

There was no carryover against the Bruins. By the time the game was done, the Leafs had given up a season-high 39 shots on goal.

The Leafs’ one-step forward, one-step back play this season quickly has grown into consistent hand-wringing for Berube. Injuries have not helped, especially to defensive stalwart Chris Tanev. That absence doesn’t account for the disorganization in the defensive zone.

The Leafs aren’t sharp and, as Berube has said, have been beating themselves.

“I’ve talked to you guys about it before,” Berube said. “It’s frustrating.”

Said John Tavares: “I don’t think we’re in a horrible spot, but certainly I don’t think we’ve maintained the level of play that we expect and what our standard is, (we’ve not been) as consistent as we’d like to be at the start of the season. No reason for panic.”

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Perhaps not, as we’re still in early November. Points accrued now, though, count just as much at the end of the season. With the Atlantic as tight as is, the Leafs can’t afford to fritter points away.

Any message from Berube isn’t fully sinking in. That has to be a concern.

Not so for Minten, of course, who was thrilled to score against the team that drafted him.

“It felt as good as it can, very good,” Minten said. “Continuing to build on earning (coach Marco Sturm’s) trust and those minutes.”

HARD-LUCK LAUGHTON

Laughton departed with an upper-body injury in the second period after he was rocked with a hit by 6-foot-7, 255-pound Bruins defenceman Nikita Zadorov.

It was Laughton’s second game after he returned from a lower-body injury suffered in the preseason. He won’t play on Sunday, Berube said, but the extent of his injury was not immediately known by the coach.

No penalty was called on the play.

“I thought it was a head shot,” Berube said. “I have to take a closer look at it.”

McMann stepped in and fought the bigger Zadorov. Good on McMann for doing so, even if losing the scrap was a foregone conclusion.

“Not an easy thing by Bobby to get in there and step up for Laughty,” Tavares said. “Thought that was a hell of a job by him.

“I didn’t see it, to be honest, but I don’t like anything high, that’s for sure. I know our bench didn’t like it.”

tkoshan@postmedia.com

X: @koshtorontosun

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