Toronto Maple Leafs More or Less Eliminate the Canucks

The Toronto Maple Leafs didn’t play their best game on Monday night.

In fact, it may have been the Toronto Maple Leafs worst game of the young season so far. Doesn’t matter. They still won. 

After an appalling two periods in which only the heroics of the much maligned Freddie Andersen kept them in the game, the Leafs had an excellent third period to cap off the three game sweep of the brutal Canucks.

With the win, the Leafs move three points up on their next opponent, the Montreal Canadians, for tops in the Canadian Division.  They are also still the NHL’s top team.

Toronto Maple Leafs Basically Just Eliminated Vancouver

After being dusted by the Leafs, the Canucks now sit 28th in the NHL in points-percentage, which is only made worse by the fact that they’ve played 16 games, three more than all but two other teams.

For the Leafs, Auston Matthews scored his bazillionth goal of the season, and in fact he scored the same amount of goals – five – as the entire Vancouver team did over the course of the three game series.

I don’t want to spend too much time complaining about how the Toronto Maple Leafs played tonight, because honestly I don’t think it matters.  It’s a long season, and there have been a lot of injuries, and no team brings their A game every night.  But you know what good teams do when they play terribly? They pull wins out of nowhere, in games they don’t deserve to win.

You’re not always going to be able to do that, but I’m just saying you should take the win and not worry too much about how it looked.

The most encouraging thing about this team is that despite the injuries, and despite the borderline bad play at times, they are winning anyways while still clearly being capable of reaching another level in terms of the quality of their play.

But honestly, you don’t have to be that good all the time when you dress four of the league’s best forwards every night.  It’s why I never understood all the consternation about losing to Columbus in last year’s playoffs – they lost by a single goal over five games despite having the lowest shooting percentage in a single playoff series, ever.  It’s was annoying and it sucked, but it was also quite clear that eventually they wouldn’t get sandbagged by a goalie every single game.

And that’s what you’re seeing now – a first place team with the best roster in the league.

As for Vancouver, you’ve got to feel for their fans because we’ve been there.  Their GM is a dinosaur and they’ve got no clue.  I can’t even for sure say that Jim Benning and Dave Nonis are different people.  Certainly I’ve never seen them in the same room together!!!

The Leafs now have a seven point lead on the fourth place Oilers, which is crazy enough.  They have 21 of a possible 26 points so far this year.  They have a nine point lead on the Canucks with three games in hand.

Go Leafs!