TORONTO — It was, in a sense, a microcosm of the Toronto Maple Leafs' campaign to this point. One part thrilling, one part perplexing. Steps forward and steps backwards.
That was much the case Thursday night in the eighth game of this young Maple Leafs season, one that’s seen the blue-and-white oscillate between wins and losses for its first seven games before dropping consecutive tilts for the first time in 2026-27.
For a stretch in this latest bout, though — with the reigning Atlantic Division winner Buffalo Sabres in town — it looked like the home side was set to keep the pattern going, sending the pendulum swinging back towards the win column. Through 40 minutes, Toronto looked sterling once again, a breakout night from Kirill Marchenko delivering the club a promising 4-2 lead.
It started 13 minutes into the night for the former Columbus Blue Jacket, and with style.
The clubs were knotted at one goal apiece, Auston Matthews continuing his dominant start to the campaign with his sixth goal of the season, before Buffalo’s Jack Quinn answered with the first of what would be a four-point night. Then a netfront battle with John Tavares sent Buffalo’s Sam Carrick to the box, giving the host’s power play a chance to take the ice.
Thirty seconds into the man-advantage, Tavares collected the puck inside the left circle, held it for a beat, and delivered it to Marchenko, who’d floated like a ghost, undetected, to the netfront. In one motion, the winger corralled the pass, drifted backwards into Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen’s crease, pulled the puck between his skates, and roofed it, through his legs, over Luukkonen’s glove.
A period later, he struck again, digging the puck out of a pile along the wall, dashing into open ice at the top of the left circle, and whipping a wrister past Luukkonen for his second of the night. The hat trick tally came five minutes later, when Colton Sissons whirled around the back of the Sabres cage and delivered an inch-perfect pass for Marchenko waiting in front. And the hats rained down.
“Those were big-time goals,” head coach Jim Hiller said of his star winger late Thursday night from the bowels of Scotiabank Arena. “He’s got that dynamicism, for sure. We’re going to need that. You knew it was going to come sooner or later, that’s what it is. You can’t be that talented and not score. So it’s going to come, like we saw tonight.”
“He was great. All over it,” captain Auston Matthews added. “Some beautiful, beautiful goals he scored tonight. It was really fun to watch. He was flying.”
Of course, the final 20 minutes of the night soured the celebration for the blue-and-white.
First came an awkward collision minutes into the period that sent Tavares to the ice in pain. The veteran pivot went immediately down the tunnel, after staying down on the ice for some time. Hiller said the club had no update on the centreman post-game.
Then the rest of the night unravelled, too. A goal from defender Dennis Gilbert midway through the frame, another from Mattias Samuelsson a couple minutes later. Then, three minutes of overtime and an Owen Power clincher that put an exclamation mark on a deflating Sabres comeback.
In a blink, Toronto’s night of progress had evaporated.
“Honestly, I thought we actually had a good process in the third. I thought we were doing the right things, taking care of the puck,” Matthews said after the dust had settled on Buffalo’s 5-4 overtime win. “You know, they’re a good team, they’ve got some good skill over there. A point shot with traffic goes in, and then a little bit of a breakdown I think, a miscommunication on a three-on-three, and it’s in the back of your net. Those are things that obviously you want to clean up. But I didn’t think our process was bad in the third.
“I thought we took care of the puck for the most part, and were making smart decisions with it — just a couple breakdowns that end up in the back of your net.”
It was the final stretch, specifically, that sunk the club in its coach's eyes.
“I thought at the 11- or 12-minute mark, they just started coming and we didn’t have an answer,” the head coach assessed. “We made some mistakes. In those moments, I know it’s hard when you’re on your heels, but you just have to be able to have a little poise, and somebody to make a play. Give them credit, they put us on our heels. And we just couldn’t make two plays in a row.”
It was a bittersweet ending for Marchenko especially, his hat-trick breakout spoiled by a missed overtime assignment that wound up deciding the game.
“It’s definitely in overtime my mistake,” the winger said quietly post-game. “Power’s my guy, and he just jumps by me and scores the goal. It’s easy. I will clean that up, for sure. … I don’t know what we can say, but we need to just learn from this game and don’t give up in the future the same thing.”
Still, on a night marred by plenty of disappointment — a rival’s decisive comeback, another key injury to another key veteran, and the benching of the club’s new, young hope — there were moments dotted in there, too, that Marchenko will cherish.
“It means a lot — to score a hat trick for the Toronto Maple Leafs, I will remember it for my whole life,” he said Thursday. “It’s a good memory for me, for sure. … But winning is more important.
“Good goals, but I want to win games more. More and more. We need to just learn from that.”
