The Toronto Maple Leafs took down the Vancouver Canucks by a score of 4-1 last night.
And if there’s one thing I can take away from the game, it’s that the Toronto Maple Leafs are incredibly lucky to have Frederik Andersen.
The Leafs played a good game last night, don’t get me wrong. John Tavares had a great night offensively. And despite the Canucks putting the pressure on in the third period and peppering the Leafs with shots, it was actually a pretty even game.
There are a couple of topics I want to address in this piece.
First of all, let’s all get on our knees and worship Frederik Andersen.
Andersen Comes Up Big
While I would say the game was even, there were certainly parts to it when the team wasn’t doing Freddie any favours. Yet he stood tall and bailed them out every single time. If I’m going to pick out one aspect in particular, it’s the fact that the Toronto Maple Leafs allowed maybe five breakaways in the third period, which is unacceptable.
If Andersen isn’t on top of his game last night, the outcome of the game could have been much different. The Canucks came out flying in the third period and used the Josh Leivo goal (which everybody knew was going to happen, by the way) as momentum. But Freddie was solid in net and reminded all of us why nobody should ever take having a good goalie for granted.
Three Points For Tavares
In terms of offense last night, John Tavares would have been the first star of the game if not for Andersen single-handedly keeping the team in the game.
After a tiny slump where Tavares was held pointless over the last three games, he went off last night and scored two goals while adding an assist.
That game in particular was a perfect example of why the Hyman – Tavares – Marner line works so well together. Marner assisted on both of Tavares’ goals, and Hyman was all over the ice forechecking and creating space for the other two.
Cody Ceci + Ice Time
Here’s another thing to talk about. Did Cody Ceci..actually look good last night?
He didn’t seem to get caught out of position nearly as much as he normally does. And he had a key assist on Tavares’ first goal. He got a shot on net from the point, knowing how good Tavares is at redirections, and sure enough, Tavares tipped it for a goal.
It’s amazing how struggling players like Ceci can actually look good when you’re not playing them 24 minutes a night against some of the most talented players in the league. This ties into my next point.
One final thing I want to note from last night’s game is the amount of ice time each player had.
Under Mike Babcock, the team’s star players like Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner would get an average of maybe 18 minutes of ice time per game. And occasionally, this is okay. You don’t have to be overworking your star players night in and night out. But if you want your star players to produce, then you should probably play them like star players.
And that’s exactly what happened last night. Matthews, Tavares, and Marner got 20, 21, and 22 minutes of ice time respectively. And what happened? Matthews scored, Tavares had a three point night, and Marner added two apples of his own.
Am I saying that the boost in ice time directly correlates to these extra points? No. But playing your best players the most and limiting your weakest players’ ice time can prove to help out the team. Who would have thought?
I’m not going to act like everything is perfect in Leafs land. But they certainly look a lot better than they did a couple of weeks ago. And they’re lucky that everyone in the Atlantic besides Boston has been mediocre this season.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are at a point now where they need to be giving effort like this each and every night. This isn’t like last season where they ran away with a playoff spot by January. Every single point matters and it will be interesting to see how the rest of this road trip shapes up.