Matthews blames himself for Leafs ' awful loss to Blues tonight

UPDATE: Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews blames himself for tonight's poor performance against the St. Louis Blues in a lopsided 5-1 loss.

In his post-game availability, Matthews described tonight's effort as a "Bad game all around, up and down the lineup. Starts with me." Matthews took the brunt of the blame for his team's poor effort and let the media know that he has to be better.

From Terry Koshan of The Toronto Sun:

As for his head coach Craig Berube, well it sounds like he's in full agreement. Berube told reporters this evening that he feels his team is "getting a little cute."

From Joshua Clipperton of the Canadian Press:

Read below for our earlier report on this game, published as events occurred.

The Toronto Maple Leafs had their worst showing of the early season on Tuesday evening when they dropped a 6-2 decision to the Columbus Blue Jackets. This evening, they're not doing a great job of rebounding against the visiting St. Louis Blues.

The Leafs are currently down 3-1 to the Blues through two periods and Leafs head coach Craig Berube is clearly not a happy man. The former Blues' coach absolutely ripped into the Leafs' top line of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies following the Blues' third goal of the game.

Check it out:

Interestingly enough, the Boston Bruins recently had cameras catch head coach Jim Montgomery tearing a strip off captain Brad Marchand in a recent game. In the Bruins' case, both Marchand and Montgomery addressed things in the media and moved on pretty quickly, with Marchand even calling it a "non-story". It'll be interesting to see if the Leafs handle things the same way...

Read below for the earlier report on Marchand, published this morning.

In case you missed it this past weekend, Boston Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery absolutely unloaded on captain Brad Marchand following an awful turnover against the Seattle Kraken.

Today, both Marchand and Montgomery cleared the air with reporters letting them know that their beef has been squashed.

"That's a thing?" Marchand said to reporters earlier today. "People are very sensitive these days. It's unfortunate how coaches are scrutinized over things like that. There's a lack of unaccountability nowadays because people can't handle the heat."

"You make a mistake like that, you deserve to hear about it," Marchand said. "I'm glad that he said something about it. If he didn't, we would have a much bigger issue. The fact that that's something that we're talking about is disappointing, but that's the way things are today."

He added, "Nobody's absolved from that. ... I should be held accountable in that situation, and I'm glad that he did."

Montgomery more or less agreed with Marchand and said that it's a non-issue in their locker room.

"Him and I are both emotional people," Montgomery explained to reporters. "I'm not ecstatic with myself about it, but I don't think about it afterward, and neither does he. He's a pro. He's a great player who does so many good things for us, and he has high expectations as well."

"For us, that's over and done with."

In other words: We're good.

It isn't every day that you see a coach in the National Hockey League publicly unloading his frustrations with a player on his team, unless of course you're watching a team led by Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella, and it's even rarer to see a coach do so with the team's leader.

On Saturday night however that is exactly what Bruins fans who were paying close attention to the NESN broadcast got to see when head coach Jim Montgomery absolutely went off on Bruins captain Brad Marchand behind the bench.

After Marchand tried to get too cute with the puck in the offensive load, leading to a turnover and a subsequent breakout for the Seattle Kraken, the Kraken would storm down the ice and quickly put the puck into the back of the Bruins net. It wasn't the most egregious mistake of Marchand's NHL career but it came at a pivotal moment midway through the third period and that was enough to set Montgomery off.

Montgomery could be seen unloading on Marchand, first hitting him with a verbal tirade with anger clearly visible on his face, As Montgomery went off on Marchand he could be seen turning redder and redder, and even went up to Marchand to give him a shove on the shoulder to make sure he had the captain's attention. Even after the shove Montgomery continued to shout at Marchand, clearly furious with the offensive zone turnover his captain had caused.

Luckily for the Bruins they were able to challenge the goal and it would be overturned by the officials on the ice, but it would seem that did little to soothe Montgomery's frustration. In his post game comments, Montgomery mentioned turnovers as a one of the primary reasons for the team's inability to pick up the win.

"We never felt like we were in control of the game, we were turning the puck over too much," said Montgomery.