TORONTO — On the night of his 200th regular-season game in a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater — after a pair of franchise legends met at centre ice, shook hands, and celebrated their roles in authoring Maple Leafs history — Matthew Knies reminded the Scotiabank Arena faithful why he remains a pivotal piece of the Maple Leafs’ future.
Facing a stiff test Tuesday night, a date with the division rival Florida Panthers — a club missing a few key names, but still above these Leafs in the standings, and still intent on making life miserable for Toronto by any means possible — the stage was set.
And midway through the hard-fought affair, Knies stepped into the spotlight, grabbed the mic, and took over.
It was 42 seconds into the middle frame that the 23-year-old reminded the Panthers’ veterans why he’s such a handful, the six-foot-three, 230-pound winger intercepting an errant Florida pass in his own zone, rushing up ice alongside Matias Maccelli, and getting lost in the haze of netfront chaos forming ahead of Sergei Bobrovsky — before reappearing out of the fog and pulling out a deft deflection to redirect a Troy Stecher point shot. The tipped puck soared over Bobrovsky’s left shoulder and fluttered the twine, taking Toronto’s lead to 2-0, and standing as the eventual game winner.
Still, it was what happened a few minutes later that truly reminded the 18,900 fans packing the stands of all Knies can be at his best.
The puck came to No. 23 deep in Florida’s zone, along the left wall. Knies picked it up and turned — he found himself encircled by three Panthers, closing in to cut him off from his mates and nullify the sequence. A stick flew in from Niko Mikkola, attempting to poke the puck off Knies' blade — but he kept possession, leaned to his left, and bulldozed the defender’s twig out of the way.
Another poke check arrived in front of him, while a third Panther to his right swung an attempt his way, too — but Knies had already mapped a path through the danger, a path straight to the cage. He moved the puck to his backhand, slid it just through the maze of sticks and skates, gave it a nudge with his forehand, let it drift while fighting off the returning Mikkola. And finally, when it seemed the Panthers had, if nothing else, run him into the corner, Knies corralled the puck, spun and wired an inch-perfect pass to a waiting Auston Matthews, who made no mistake on the finish.
“He’s so strong, he’s so hard to knock off the puck,” the Maple Leafs captain marvelled from the locker room post-game, after the dust settled on a dominant 4-1 Toronto win. “Even when you think you’ve taken it away from him, or you got it off of his stick, he’s so strong that he can find a way to get it back.
“I mean, he won two, three battles there. I just tried to get into a spot, some quiet ice, and he found me. I had the whole net to shoot at. So, it was a great play by him, just to stay with it the whole way.”
Asked what he thought of the elite display of vision the winger pulled off after those battles, Matthews smiled.
“I don’t know if he knew I was there,” he said with a laugh.
“Not entirely,” Knies admitted. “But I heard him, and obviously he’s a good goal-scorer — he knows to put himself in a good area like that in front of the net.”
The winger’s return to form has played no small part in the Maple Leafs picking up steam of late. After wading through an eight-game stretch that saw Knies muster only one assist, the Phoenix, Ariz., product has collected nine points in has past seven tilts.
More than that, he’s looked like the quick-footed, slick-handed, heavy-hitting gem that turned heads last season, that got the Maple Leafs faithful dreaming of No. 23 evolving into a bona fide all-world power forward.
“To be honest with you, it’s a hard thing to do for 82 games,” he said. “Obviously I try to work my tail off to do that. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, and there’s some unlucky bounces when the game goes that way. But that’s the kind of player I want to be.”
Through 200 games as a Maple Leaf, all signs point to Knies steadily becoming that player. Per Sportsnet Stats, the former University of Minnesota star is only the fourth player to amass 50-plus goals, 75-plus assists and 400-plus hits through his first 200 NHL games. The other three? Alex Ovechkin, Jamie Benn and Gabriel Landeskog.
Not terrible company.
“I thought he was really strong on the puck tonight,” head coach Craig Berube said of Knies post-game. “Again, he’s scoring some goals, probably 10 feet out, around the net — that’s where he scores his goals.”
No. 23’s game-swinging second period aside, it was a complete effort that spurred Toronto’s win in Tuesday’s measuring-stick tilt against the Cats. The type of all-hands-on-deck approach needed to pull the Maple Leafs back into playoff relevancy.
“I just thought we played a good team game — all four lines played hard, played physical,” Matthews said of the night. “Our forecheck was really good tonight. Goaltending was great. I mean, those are the kinds of efforts that we need on nights like this, against tough opponents like this. When you’re missing lots of guys, you need everyone to chip in a little bit more.
“I thought we matched their intensity from the start,” Knies added. “I think everyone contributed. Woller played great in net. Top to bottom, I think it was an unbelievable effort out of us.”
And one that surely means all the more given the opponent on the other side of the sheet. Though, with how the first half of Toronto’s season went, every tilt from here on out will require the type of desperation drummed up by a hard-fought post-season rivalry.
“I think all the wins right now just mean a lot,” Knies said. “You see how tight the standings are — every two points is a battle. It’s a war. I just think we’re doing a really good job and we’re stringing them together.
“The energy in this room is really good. I like how we’re approaching games, I like how we’re preparing for games. We’re just going to try to keep that consistent.”
