When Frederik Andersen left the game and arena in Buffalo earlier than scheduled Saturday night, Curtis McElhinney became a story in Toronto.
Losing your No. 1 goalie to ye olde upper-body injury when he had been living up to his billing and holding your place on the playoff grid is reasonable cause to gulp hard. Having to put your backup in any contest during the stretch run is not exactly how you’d want to draw up the story. And this would be especially true if your backup is, like McElhinney, not a guy who has been there for you in such straits in the past, but rather a piece that you scavenged from the waiver wire a couple of months before.
If you considered McElhinney’s record with the Leafs since coming over from Columbus in January (four wins in nine decisions, a 2.76 GAA with .919 save percentage) as reason to believe, well, you would be pouring the foundation of false confidence. When last seen, coming in for Andersen in Buffalo, McElhinney fought the puck and the puck scored a unanimous decision.
Not the case, Tuesday night, though.
In the wake of the Leafs’ 3-2 win over Florida, talk will focus on matters other than a backup pressed into service. No doubt the lead item is Auston Matthews and his 35th goal of the season, one that broke Wendel Clark’s team record from back in ’86. A complementary story to that would be the play of left-winger Zach Hyman, who struggled mightily in deep winter but made a sublime setup on Matthews’ goal and scored the eventual winner, short-handed in the third period, when the game was very much in doubt.
Understand, however, that no one in the Leafs’ lineup came up bigger than McElhinney, the guy management would rather have watching from a perch on the bench. McElhinney wound up stopping 25 of 27 shots to even his record. When informed that this was his 50th career win, he looked almost sheepish—a landmark game that only a backup can hold dear. Or notice.
If anyone in the first intermission of Tuesday night’s game had told you that McElhinney was going to be a story at game’s end, you’d have laughed.
For 20 minutes McElhinney had little to do except skate over to the bench to grab a water bottle during the scrapes of the rink. From the drop of the puck through the first intermission the Maple Leafs played a tight and conscientious. Scorers credited Toronto with only three blocked shots through the stretch but on the off chance that the Panthers had possession in the Leafs’ end, they put their bodies in front of Florida’s shooters on the perimeter and forced them to fire wide.
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The home side dictated the action and dominated possession shift in and shift out. The flow was always towards the visitor’s net where James Riemer stood, likely musing that it everything looked too familiar even if the colour scheme on the ice was reversed. It was 2-0 Leafs. It could have been 5-0 the way the possession played out.
The Panthers mustered just three shots in the first period, none of them particularly glorious scoring chances. At this point, the post-season is out of the question for the Floridians and for 20 minutes they played that way, strictly mail-in mode. The team is in disarray—just the other day the Panthers’ coach calling into question moves the GM made which would be business as usual if they were not one and the same man, Tom Rowe.
You couldn’t have seen it coming, but a different Panthers team came out for the second period and took the game to the Leafs. McElhinney had to turn aside at least five good scoring chances, ranging from a shot in the slot from Jaromir Jagr to a deflection by Aleksander Barkov to a one-timer from Jonathan Huberdeau and, most impressive of all, a reach-back with an out-stretched paddle to turn aside a shot by Reilly Smith.
McElhinney said that he saw it all coming. "You’re kind of waiting for them to make that push," he said.
If the goalie knew, he should have let his teammates know and they’d be wise to pick his brain about investments.
McElhinney was finally beaten with four minutes to go before the end of the second period. Keith Yandle let a shot go from the point and Smith fought through a holdup (more of a wave) by Matthews to crash the net and deflect the puck past McElhinney. The goalie made a lunge for it too late and wound up prone in the crease in something like the fetal position, a posture that many Leafs fans might have curled up into when considering that a very winnable and necessary game might get away from the home team.
McElhinney stood his ground in the third period—Jagr wound up scoring in the dying shifts to pull Florida back within a goal but really didn’t muster a quality scoring chance after that.
At season’s end it will stand as another W and look like nothing much, probably, but it might be the biggest game McElhinney will play. He said he was just looking after business. “When a guy like Freddy, who’s a big part of the team goes down, everybody steps up and does his job," he said.
The preliminary signs are that Andersen might not be out that long—what was feared to be a concussion looks like it was just a teeth-rattling shot in the chops, given that he practiced in Monday. The worst fears after the game Saturday night in Buffalo, that the Leafs would be down to their backup for the duration, don’t look like they’ll be realized.
Someone should ask McElhinney if he sees that coming.
