It was as bad a stretch of hockey as the Toronto Maple Leafs have played this season.

Which is saying something given some of the losses early on.

But the first 26 minutes and 34 seconds against the Coyotes on Tuesday was some truly pathetic hockey, and Toronto deserved to be down by at least the three goals they were at that point.

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Not many teams come back from that kind of face plant, either.

In that span, the Leafs were outshot 15-3 and had only 20.7 per cent of the shot attempts (or Corsi) at even strength. They iced the puck five times. The majority of the faceoffs were in their own zone.

And it went on and on like that, for nearly half a game.

"We just seemed like we were in neutral and they were in third gear and we were chasing," was how coach Randy Carlyle explained it afterward.

"They played their game plan more effectively and we were a little loose with the puck and loose with our systems," winger James van Riemsdyk added.

For long-time watchers of this team under Carlyle, a lot of that isn't new. When the Leafs are bad, they can be very bad, and they seem to have special struggles reserved for when they face well-organized teams that lock down the neutral zone.

You can say a lot of things about the Coyotes lack of name talent, but they can lock things down, and coach Dave Tippett is extremely well prepared for opponents.

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They were also a desperate team Tuesday, having won twice in their last eight games.

Because this start was really the tale of the game and the tale, in many ways, of what ails this team, I went back and watched the first 26 minutes and change a second time. Along the way, I noted not only which team was controlling the play but more importantly why they were doing so, with specific emphasis on how they entered the offensive zone.

Two things immediately stood out in doing this:

a) The Coyotes game plan obviously involved a very hard forecheck on the Leafs, as their forwards were in deep on them and disrupted any attempt at a breakout again and again.

b) These two teams were playing vastly different styles, and one was working much better than the other.

When we talk about entering the offensive zone, typically there are two basic types of entries: controlled and uncontrolled (or dump-ins). There's no one way to win a hockey game, but many of the NHL's best possession teams – neither of which were involved in this game – do so by managing the puck well coming out of the D zone and going into the O zone.

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Arizona did this on Tuesday. Against Toronto, in the section of the game I examined, the Coyotes made 19 controlled entries at even strength and had 10 dump-ins.

For the Leafs, I counted only six controlled entries and a remarkable 31 dump-ins, the majority of which were either unrecovered, part of a line change or an icing.

And back the other way the puck came, more often than not.

So much of the focus coming out of games like this is on the specific errors that became goals. Jake Gardiner's whiff on a pass behind the net. The bounce off Stephane Robidas's skate. Van Riemsdyk's brain fart on the third goal. James Reimer's inability to control a rebound.

The thing is that those errors are contributing very little to the other pressing issues I listed above. The individual micro-mistakes or miscues are what stand out because that's when the goal light came on, but they're symptoms of being under pressure and in your own zone all the time more than the actual cause of the team's possession issue.

If you look closely at all of those icings and dump-ins (which if unrecovered are essentially turnovers) many are coming from the defencemen when they don't have an option in the defensive zone.

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Several others were by flat footed forwards whose only option was to tip a poor pass in deep or bloop it in from the neutral zone.

Now, some teams make dump-ins work for them. They're rare, but bigger clubs like the Los Angeles Kings can pull it off when the pucks are well placed and the strategy sound.

And sometimes it's necessary to dump more often against teams that play tight hockey in the neutral zone, as they might not give you a lot of other options.

The problem with the Leafs on nights like this is the dump or tip-in is the only option, with the carry-ins happening only when Phil Kessel can catch a team napping and use a burst of speed through the neutral zone.

To counter, the Coyotes were only too happy to forecheck extremely hard, take away the pass deep in the defensive zone, and otherwise be patient and force mistakes and dump-ins that netminder Mike Smith could grab behind the net.

That type of game works far too often against Toronto.

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You can't help but wonder watching all this if a different strategy would produce different results. Teams like the Wild right now are dominating play a lot of nights by trying to carry the puck as much as possible, and they're an example of a team with smaller, speedier skaters to work with.

They're not built like the Kings, but they find other ways to manage the puck and generate offensive zone time.

At the very least, the Leafs need to support their D better in their own zone, giving them an outlet pass. Then they need to give the puck carrier another outlet and maybe even another until they manage the puck over centre ice.

They also have to have a strategy for entering the offensive zone with more control when teams stand them up at the blueline.

And they shouldn't be conceding the neutral zone and their own blueline so easily. Many of the Coyotes entries with control were almost completely uncontested on Tuesday, with the Leafs D backing off and their forwards nowhere to be found (presumably they were chasing a dump-in).

The first half of this game was obviously an extreme example of all this, but a lot of what was problematic there was also familiar.

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A lot of folks in Toronto are blaming the team's lack of talent for its inability to take the next step right now, but then you see games like this where they're outclassed by a roster with a lot of Rob Klinkhammers and Brandon McMillans and you wonder.

Is there more there?