Toronto would rather forget their 6-1 loss to the Utah Mammoth on Tuesday night, but the biggest issue dealt with how ineffective Morgan Rielly truly was.
Coming into Tuesday's game, the Maple Leafs were tired, banged up and working on minimal rest after a 4-3 OT win in Colorado then needing to travel to Utah right after.
That led to a well-rested Utah Mammoth squad running all over Toronto on Tuesday they came away with a dominant 6-1 victory.
They outpaced the Maple Leafs all night and they continued to prove why they have been one of the NHL's biggest surprises so far this year.
Morgan Rielly's no good, very bad hockey game
You can't fault Dennis Hildeby completely however, as there were several goals he had absolutely no chance at stopping, but things may have been a little less unsightly had it not been for one player's glaring issues: Morgan Rielly's.
Per HockeyStatCards on X, Rielly had the second-worst game score of the entire year with a -8.21 only behind Logan Mailloux's -8.27.
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That means that Rielly's combination of goals, primary assists, secondary assists, shots on goal, blocked shots, penalty differential, faceoffs, 5-on-5 corsi differential, and 5-on-5 goal differential were all some of the worst of the year.
Rielly's counting stats were not great either. He had no points, was a minus-4 yet again and couldn't keep up with any of Utah's quicker skaters which led to too many chances for the Mammoth.
Morgan Rielly not doing enough to justify consistent defensive lapses
This isn't a new issue though and things are quickly going from bad to worse for Rielly. Last year was expected to be the rough season and fans would get a turnaround this year but it's been anything but.
Rielly's got a minus-14 rating this season, with the next worst defensemen are Philippe Myers (minus-8) then Dakota Mermis (minus-3). The longest tenured Leaf is getting outplayed by two depth players defensively and it's not just a small sample size either.
That means that Rielly's 26 points are being counteracted by the fact he's been on the ice for 38 goals against total -- that's over 25% of Toronto's total goals this season.
Myers has 23 games played; that's half the season. While he hasn't been great, it's hard to justify seeing Rielly down in the basement of plus/minus whereas the team has players like Troy Stecher and Jake McCabe with a plus-10 and plus-26 respectively.
Even OEL and Brandon Carlo are positive and Carlo's just returned to the ice. There's clearly an elephant in the room when it comes to Toronto's blueline and things may need to change.
Whether that be resting Rielly on back-to-backs to prevent him from getting too tired (especially with back-to-back late games) shifting his responsibilities a bit or even cutting ties with him -- Toronto can't afford to have these types of games.
Sure it may just be a blip on the radar when it comes to Rielly's season and won't likely affect Toronto going forward but it's something the team needs to be proactive about because it could not only cost them games, but a playoff spot too.
Is Morgan Rielly the worst defensive player on the Maple Leafs?
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