There were a few things to like last night at the Air Canada Centre. There were 48th Highlanders, piping in the season. Canadian Olympic medallists were honoured in both official languages and the crowd supplied itself with a rousing a cappella version of the national anthem.
But after that, there wasn't a lot for Leaf fans to cheer.
Outside of hitting posts, there wasn't a facet of the game in which the Toronto Maple Leafs outplayed the Montreal Canadiens.
So no surprise the Habs, powered by Guillaume Latendresse, Sergei Kostitsyn and Alex Tanguay, skated away with a 6-1 victory in Toronto's 91st home opener. The Leafs fell to 42-31-15-2 in home openers, their seventh home-opening loss in a row.
Coach Ron Wilson has informed fans there would be nights like this - "Bumps along the way," he had called it earlier in the day - he just didn't think it would come so quickly after an energizing win in Detroit on Thursday.
Parts of the game that made the Leafs look so tantalizingly entertaining - an energetic forecheck, a relentless backcheck - vanished. Bad habits returned.
If anything, last night's effort proved the Leafs have a lot to work on: their power play, penalty killing, goaltending, five-on-five play, team discipline.
Those are just for starters.
Of course, this team is still getting to know each other and growing pains are to be expected for a team with half of the no fewer than 10 new players on its roster.
So blind backhand passes to players who quickly move out of position are, perhaps, to be expected.
But sellouts of 19,370 expect more to cheer.
Jason Blake scored a power-play goal - the Leafs were already down 5-0 at the time - so that was something.
Curtis Joseph replaced a very shaky Vesa Toskala after two periods, the Habs up 6-1.
That gave the crowd a chance to chant "Cujo" again.
Jamal Mayers won an abbreviated fight over Habs tough guy Tom Kostopoulos, but that's hardly the hockey Wilson wants.
And to their credit, the Leafs didn't quit. Nik Antropov thought he scored a goal, but it was called back because his elbow appeared to direct the puck into the net.
Matt Stajan and Jiri Tlusty each had a breakaways as singular efforts overtook team play.
Mikhail Grabovski came to play, winning the opening faceoff and looking like a force in trying to control the puck against his former team.
But the rest of the Maple Leafs - perhaps nervous in front of the sellout crowd - lacked any jump in their skating, a big reason the Habs opened up a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes and stretched it to 6-1 after 40.
Roman Hamrlik and Alex Kovalev got the opening markers. Kovalev's was a beauty, spinning in front of the Leaf net and burying the puck low to the left corner while Leaf defenceman Jonas Frogren did his best to tie up the Habs sniper.
Rookie Luke Schenn had an off period, if not an off night, committing a giveaway in front of Toskala and another at the Habs' blue line while the Leafs were pressing.
The Leafs had the only power play of the first period and were ineffective moving the puck or gaining the Montreal zone.
Penalties did in the Leafs in the second period, during which Montreal scored three times with the man advantage and four times overall.
Stajan took a four-minute high-sticking penalty and the Habs scored twice, with Sergei Kostitsyn and Alex Tanguay notching their first goals of the season.
Schenn then took a delay-of-game call, and Sergei Kostitsyn got his second of the night, a wrist shot over Toskala's glove.
Blake got the Leafs on the board. The right winger had been shooting - and missing - all night from all angles, so it is with some irony how he scored his first of the year. This time, Mike Van Ryn's slap shot bounced off Habs goalie Jaroslav Halak and Blake tapped in the rebound.
Leaf Nation was in the process of celebrating the announcement of that goal when Latendresse scored to make it a 6-1 Montreal lead 22 seconds later.
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