The Toronto Maple Leafs won in a shootout, wait what?
Yes, the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Vegas Golden Knights – defending the round table – Monday night and they did it in shootout fashion, a storyline that was rather scarce last season.
If you’re at all concerned with their shootout record from last season, it was a measly 1-8, the worst in the NHL during the 2016-17 season by a long shot.
The game wasn’t the best of games, Frederik Andersen let in a couple of easy goals that he’d probably like to have back and the defense wasn’t sharp.
Speaking of defense, someone needs to either sharpen Jake Gardiner’s skates or just get him new blades because he’s blowing more tires than a rally car.
The amount of time he’s fallen over recently is uncanny, but don’t think this is me bashing Gardiner, I just think it’s funny how he keeps falling over.
It needs to be fixed, though.
Another general note is that Mike Babcock looked pretty ticked off, more so than I’ve ever seen him before, so you can bet on the team (minus Auston Matthews) getting an earful today.
Anyways, let’s get to the team statistical comparison.
Outlook
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Coming into the game, the Leafs haven’t been necessarily fairing too well as of late, neither have the Golden Knights, but lesser so.
A win was a must and a win is what we got.
The big (not so big) storyline heading into the game was that it was Brendan Leipsic’s first game against his former team, the Leafs, but that quickly faded away as he played little to no part in the game.
Another headline to follow was on the status of Matthews and whether he’d be playing or not, having been labeled a ‘game-time decision’ due to soreness.
Ya, he looked good.
Matthews at 70% is better than most players at 100%, how accurate is that?
I can’t remember if it was Paul Romanuk or Greg Millen that said it during the broadcast, but I loved it.
| Team | SOG | TFO% | PP | PIM | HITS | BLKS | GVA |
| Knights | 28 | 51% | 1/3 | 8 | 31 | 19 | 15 |
| Leafs | 25 | 49% | 1/4 | 6 | 29 | 12 | 25 |
Talk about a pretty even game from the numbers side of things.
Individual Stats
Plenty to share here.
- Nazem Kadri: two goals
- Mitchell Marner: one assist + shootout winner
- James van Riemsdyk: one goal
- Patrick Marleau: one assist
- William Nylander: one assist
- Auston Matthews: one assist
- Morgan Rielly: one assist
I was hoping for Kadri to net his third goal and fourth career hat trick, but no luck there albeit I’ll take what I can get.
Thanks to Marner’s shootout magic, the Leafs won and if it weren’t for Matthews amazing (didn’t mean to) assist, van Riemsdyk never would’ve scored.
That kid is amazing.
Now, as I said earlier, Andersen didn’t have the strongest of games posting a .893 Sv% on 28 shots, but he did play well in the latter stages of the third, overtime and the shootout.
And some really quick news, Kasperi Kapanen has been loaned to the Toronto Marlies while Frederik Gauthier has been recalled to the Leafs.
That’s fun.