TORONTO — The Toronto Maple Leafs turned in what more than one person on the club called their best performance of the season to beat the top team in the National Hockey League. And yet, the black clouds that have hung around this club since the start of the year refuse to completely dissipate.
The Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 at Scotiabank Arena on Saturday night, handing the visitors just their second loss of the young campaign thanks to two goals from Auston Matthews. For all the good Toronto turned in, though, the third period opened with an unwanted plot twist when Erik Kallgren replaced starter Ilya Samsonov.
As it turned out, the latter injured his knee while being beaten on a second-period penalty shot by Brad Marchand. With Samsonov’s usual battery mate Matt Murray already on the shelf thanks to an abductor ailment, the Leafs’ goalie situation got that much more concerning.
In the moment, it was certainly a bit of a nervy final 20 minutes for the Blue and White. But Kallgren and his teammates made the lead stand up, finishing off a game Toronto started with speed and purpose by gutting it out with some huge puck-battle wins and blocked shots.
“We found another level tonight,” said Buds coach Sheldon Keefe. “We moved the puck better; we skated harder both ways. We knew Boston was going to demand our absolute best if we were going to compete with them. We established the pace of the game rather than just feeling our way through it. That fist 10-12 minutes was definitely the quickest and I thought the best we’ve been all season. That provided the foundation for the win.”
The tension was definitely ratcheted up midway through the final frame when Toronto was whistled for back-to-back minor penalties. Throw in the Bruins’ six-on-five advantage with the goalie pulled in the final minutes and it made for some hairy hockey; especially considering the guy in goal had been wearing a baseball hat for most of the evening. But Kallgren stood his ground while the skaters — and one in particular — threw their bodies in front of everything they could.
“I thought our kill was great,” said left winger Michael Bunting. “[Justin] Holl especially was blocking every shot, even on the six-on-five he played huge for us, plays big minutes every single night for us. He’s a big player back there and I think all the ‘D’ played really well and shut that down on the kill. That showed a lot there for us.”
Keefe said it was the kind of outing where you knew five-on-five goals would be hard to come by. “A game like this, offence is hard to come by, you need your big boys to step up,” he said.
Given that, the bench boss had to love Toronto getting a star performance from a prime-time player for the second consecutive contest. Three nights ago it was captain John Tavares netting a hat trick for a squad that limped home with a 4-4-2 record after a brutal four-game road trip.
Against Boston, Matthews scored his team’s first goal for the second straight game and after his game-winner, the reining MVP and goal-scoring champ now has twice as many tallies on the year (six) as he did through 10 games.
Has the dam broken?
“I hope so,” No. 34 said after the game. “I just want to continue to play hard and try to get my opportunities and make good on them.”
Matthews was quick to point out the efforts of his teammates setting the table for him. On his game-opening score in the first, Bunting was scraping with big Bruins defenceman Brandon Carlo behind the net. When he lost his stick during the confrontation, Bunting booted the puck over to Matthews at the corner of the net and the centre showed off his quick hands by immediately sucking it to his backhand and swishing it past a somewhat bewildered Linus Ullmark.
Matthews’ second tally — which came on the man advantage in the second period — occurred after William Nylander blazed into the zone, whipped around the net and hit him with a perfect pass on the lip of the crease. “He just kind of went for a walk there, I just tried to get open,” Matthews said. “Obviously he’s got all the skill in the world to make plays and he sees the ice extremely well. He threw it on a tee for me.”
While Matthews wasn’t going to whiff on that one, the reality is even some seemingly can’t-miss opportunities weren’t falling for him early in the year. Keefe thinks his guy has changed his habits just a little bit and was very encouraged by Matthews’ — and everyone else’s — play all over the ice.
“He just stayed with it,” Keefe said. “I don’t think it’s been anything really different, it’s just, he’s going to those spots,. You look where he scored both his goals tonight, those are areas that he hadn’t got to enough — yet he had been getting there [a bit] and missing some of those which were virtual tap-ins. He just continued to go there and continued to work, I thought, on both sides of the puck.”
While losing Samsonov — who Keefe didn’t have a significant update on, but acknowledged the Russian won’t be in the lineup Sunday night against the Carolina Hurricanes — hurts, the Leafs did welcome back Timothy Liljegren as the Swedish defenceman made his return following hernia surgery in September.
“I thought he looked really good,” Keefe said, noting this was a particularly tough game to debut in for Liljegren given it had what the coach described as more of a late-season intensity.
Things certainly won’t get any easier with Samsonov shelved. Combine Murray’s injury with the fact prospect Joseph Woll is also dealing with a shoulder ailment and that means — for now, anyway — Kallgren is the guy.
“He’s just really calm and collected in the net,” Matthews said. “He doesn’t really say too much, but I think his demeanor does the talking for him and his confidence speaks for itself. He’s really steady in there, so I think all of us have a lot of confidence in him to go out there and win some games for us. Obviously coming in in the third period cold, not an easy job to do. You really got to tip your hat to him.”
The same can be said for basically every Leaf tonight. The challenge will be to keep it up with another top-flight club waiting for them in Carolina.
“Any time you have a big test like we did tonight, like we do tomorrow, I think these are the kind of games that — especially when we’re trying to climb out of a bit of a hole, trying to play a little bit better — these are the games we need to play really well in,” Matthews said.
“Really positive for us tonight.”
