TORONTO — Now that is how you finish a game. That’s how you polish off a victory.
The Toronto Maple Leafs may have been fortunate to keep the score tied entering the third period on Saturday, but there was nothing fortunate about the 20 minutes that made the difference against the Detroit Red Wings.
“Good win for their team,” Mike Babcock conceded afterwards.
The Leafs were down to five defencemen after Roman Polak suffered an undisclosed injury to his left leg or ankle midway through the game. Detroit had also put them on spin cycle, dominating possession at even strength for considerable stretches.
The score may have been 1-1 at the second intermission, but the Red Wings had a pretty clear expectation of how it was going to end up.
“I thought we were going to come out and dominate them in the third,” said Babcock. “We should have been — they were down to five D, all you had to do was attack their net and you would have been off to the races.”
Coulda, woulda, shoulda.
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The Leafs clearly had other ideas and used nice individual efforts from Tyler Bozak and Peter Holland — both turned a defensive zone turnover by the Red Wings into a goal — to flip the script.
However, what was most encouraging for Toronto is the fact they held Detroit to just five shots in the decisive period, thereby limiting the Red Wings to a total of 27 for the game.
The players view that as a progress. It’s a tangible sign that they can become a better defensive team, which is an absolute must if they’re going to get back to the postseason.
“I think it just goes to show that if we stick with the game plan we’re going to get rewarded,” said Holland.
The Leafs seem to have a penchant for lopsided outcomes — Saturday’s 4-1 victory over Detroit was the 12th time in 21 games they’ve either won or lost by at least three goals.
Faced with all of those crazy ups and downs, coach Randy Carlyle decided this week to start giving his players “process goals” to focus on each night. For the foreseeable future, they’re going to worry more about details in the game rather than the score of the game.
As a result, this latest victory was also a reminder that there is work to do.
Part of the focus for Saturday was holding Detroit to 25 shots or less. They allowed 22 through two periods before really buckling down.
“We were looking like it was pretty glum going into the third there, but I thought we did a great job in the third period of holding them off from getting pucks at our net,” said Holland.
It was a far cry from the middle frame, which saw Tomas Tatar tie the game 1-1 and Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier make his sharpest saves.
“They were directing pucks to the net,” said captain Dion Phaneuf. “When that happens you get running around a bit and it wears on your team because you’re spending more time in your zone.”
Most importantly, the win pulled Toronto within one point of Detroit in the Atlantic Division standings a quarter of the way into the season. The Red Wings swept a back-to-back earlier in the year and that left an impression.
“We knew that we had to get the points because we owed them,” said Phaneuf. “To stay composed and to stay the course of our system and to stay disciplined to the way that we wanted to play, we did a lot of real good things and we have to build on it.”
It was a satisfying end to a tumultuous week.
After the humiliating losses to Buffalo and Nashville by a combined score of 15-4 and the uproar that followed the decision not to salute the home fans after Thursday’s win over Tampa, the Leafs wanted to make a statement on the ice.
They walked the tightrope for two periods but got the job done when it mattered most.
“That felt good,” said Holland.
