Who Burned the Toronto Maple Leafs With the Dirtiest Goal?

The year 2020 is just over a week deep and the Toronto Maple Leafs have been in some highlight reels they’d prefer didn’t involve them.

The NHL is full of incredible goals every night. Fans watch and hope to see their favourite players perform spectacularly and do something memorable. Sometimes the incredible happens, but it’s at the expense of a fan’s preferred team. That was the case for the Toronto Maple Leafs fans.

In the recent Leafs home game against the Edmonton Oilers, hockey fans witnessed one of the best goals of the season.

We compare Connor McDavid’s dazzling effort to the impressive goal scored by Patrik Laine just a few nights earlier and ask, who beat the Leafs best?

McDavid’s Goal

With the score favouring the Oilers by a pair of goals in the third period of the weekend game, McDavid turned on the jets.

After the puck gets intercepted and moved ahead to the Oilers’ superstar captain, he does something so deceptive that it’s not often (or ever) used to fool the defender. After taking the puck over the blue line McDavid goes one-on-one with Morgan Rielly. McDavid then turns his shoulders and faces Rielly.

It appeared as though the crafty center was looking to dish the puck to a teammate. Perhaps he was before thinking better of it. Instead of giving it up, McDavid hangs onto it. He then changes gears, pulls the puck to his left, and blows right by the now stationary defender.

All McDavid had left to do at this point was beat Michael Hutchinson high glove side.

Laine’s Goal

On January 2, Laine, like McDavid, deked Rielly out of his jock. On his home rink, the Winnipeg Jets pulled even with the Leafs in the second period with his goal.

Jets defenseman, Neal Pionk, gets things started by making an outlet pass to the streaking right-winger. Once Laine gets the puck on his half of the neutral zone, he does all the rest by himself.

Laine crosses over the Toronto Maple Leafs blueline, leading with the puck well in front of him. That’s enough to get Rielly to lean in towards him, stick extended. Noticing that position, the Finnish sniper pushes the puck in towards the middle of the ice, twisting up Rielly. With Rielly now off-balance, Laine pulls the puck back out and goes wide.

While this move beats the defenseman, Rielly actually does a good job to get his stick out and block the initial shot attempt. All this did, was delay the inevitable. Making the goal even more impressive, Laine retrieves the puck below the circle close to the corner and rips a shot from an impossible angle.

Just like with McDavid’s goal, the goalie gets beat on his glove side. This time, it was Frederik Andersen in net. Because the shot was readjusted, Andersen was in the process of sliding across his crease when the puck got past him.

The decision is now yours. Who had the prettier goal? Let us know in the comments.