TORONTO — There was a moment, five minutes into the night, when it looked like this game might turn.
The Toronto Maple Leafs had struck out to an early lead against the visiting New York Rangers, off another moment of brilliance from young Easton Cowan. But the Blueshirts had started pushing back, piling up chances. A Vladislav Gavrikov point shot had glanced off Mika Zibanejad’s stick and beaten Sergei Bobrovsky, quieting the Scotiabank Arena crowd.
Then the blue-and-white’s blue-collar trio hopped over the boards and went to work. First it was Zack MacEwen, flying into the offensive zone and barreling into defender Marcus Pettersson behind the Rangers' net. Then it was Teddy Blueger cutting off Will Cuylle along the wall, forcing the puck back towards the cage once more. The Rangers tried to reorganize, to steady themselves — only to see Brandon Duhaime crash into Sean Durzi and push play back into the depths of New York’s zone yet again.
Two more times, the Rangers tried to get the puck to safety, and two more times the Maple Leafs’ fourth-liners stuffed it back into their zone. A tone-setting sequence from the depth trio. But it was only the start of a banner night for the three veterans.
A few minutes later, the trio combined for a pivotal go-ahead goal, MacEwen battling behind the net and shovelling the puck up to Duhaime near the right faceoff dot — the winger fought off a Ranger, pivoted, and delivered a heads-up pass to a wide-open Blueger at the netfront.
The Latvian cashed in, and in doing so, earned he and his linemates their first points in a Maple Leafs sweater.
“We see it every day in practice with those three,” defender Troy Stecher said late Thursday night, after he himself potted a game-winner with less than 30 seconds left on the clock to end a raucous 5-4 back-and-forth win. “They're ultimate pros. They’ve been around, they have experience.
“It felt like we were kind of sluggish tonight, and they dragged us into the fight. Kudos to them — they stepped up big.”
A period later, the Maple Leafs found themselves wobbled again. Another Rangers push had the visitors leading, off a pair of goals from Oliver Bjorkstrand and Tye Kartye in the opening seven minutes of the middle frame. The fourth-liners hopped back onto the sheet, rolled up their sleeves, and dug in once more, pulling their club back from the brink.
Again, it was a frenetic forecheck that willed them onto the board, MacEwen chasing down a casual Pettersson regroup in the Rangers' zone, Blueger disrupting an outlet pass and throwing it back into the Rangers' side of the ice, before the puck landed on Duhaime’s stick as he sprinted down the left wing.
The pride of Coral Springs, Fla., collected the puck, whipped it at netminder Dylan Garand, then beat everyone else to the rebound and shovelled it into the back of the cage. Tie game.
Duhaime finished the night with a team-leading three points — registering an assist on the eventual game-winner a period later, too — the first three-point night of his six-year big-league career. It was a long time coming.
“I think the past four or five games, we've been doing well,” he said from the Maple Leafs' locker room after Thursday’s win was in the bag. “On the forecheck, creating a few opportunities where we haven't been rewarded. But we've just been playing the right way — simple, hard, just to our identity. I thought tonight was no different.”
“Our attitude and mindset didn’t change,” his centreman, Blueger, added. “That was the biggest thing, that regardless of what happens — it's hard, because you’re judged on results — but you try not to focus on the results.
“Just keep your mentality, your attitude, your work ethic the same, no matter what.”
It was a crucial piece of the equation on this night, as Toronto’s fourth line wound up an engine that kept the group pressing forward, into the muck, even as the Rangers tried to knock them back and wrestle this victory out of their hands.
“I think that's probably our best game of the year through a 60 minutes for me,” head coach Jim Hiller assessed. “The Rangers played good, they pushed us hard. We didn't have those lulls, dips — in fact, I thought we ended up pushing, and we got some momentum back.”
The performance from his bottom-of-the-lineup battlers played no small part.
“You know, they've been really good since they've been put together,” he said. “Everybody always loves it when those guys get rewarded with goals and points and stuff like that, because they do the dirty work. They're blocking shots, getting all the forechecks going. So I think that's what makes the night extra special.
“The three of them have looked really, really good together. And really give us something. You know, I don't know what you want to call it — but it's something.”
Crucial to their success, which has been building steadily, game by game, is clarity of purpose.
“I think it's just fast, predictable, hard hockey,” MacEwen said. “We know what each other, each one of us, are going to do with the puck. We want to get it behind their D, we want to wear D down, we want to set it up for the next line. … We know what our job is. And I think we're doing a good job of clicking and figuring that out.”
On this night, the rest of the team followed suit, that approach filtering through the rest of the lineup. It’s why the Maple Leafs were able to push the Rangers back the first time the visitors tied it up, and push back again when the Blueshirts clawed their way to a lead of their own, and again in the game’s dying moments, after New York had potted a potentially demoralizing tying goal late in the third.
“We were consistent,” Blueger said of his club’s resolve. “Our mentality didn't change, our attitude didn't change. Our work ethic. All those things were there. We supported each other, stuck with it. You know, giving up that 4-4 goal, that can be a little deflating, but I think we came right back at them. I think we can learn a lot from that.”
The tone-setting performance gives Blueger, Duhaime and MacEwen a collective seven points on the campaign, all collected Thursday under the Scotiabank Arena lights. It gives Toronto a third straight win, erasing the three-game slide that preceded this week’s momentum-building victories against San Jose and Columbus.
Now comes another test, a meeting with the red-hot Edmonton Oilers on Saturday, kicking off a four-game Western Canada swing through Alberta and B.C., with a stop in Seattle, too. For the blue-and-white’s fourth-line battlers, Thursday night provides something to build off, some proof of concept after weeks of quiet progress.
But the group’s focus remains unchanged.
“Just creating opportunities,” Duhaime said Thursday. “Our game is not really going to be judged on offence. Our game's going to be more about momentum swings, playing the right way, defending hard.
“Anytime you're on a fourth line like that, you’ve got to bring it every day. There's no games off.”
