Toronto Maple Leafs: Team Effort and Defense Take Down the Oilers

Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Edmonton Oilers 4-0.

With the Hart trophy debate in full swing, and the Toronto Maple Leafs without their best player, Connor McDavid missed an opportunity to earn two points for his team.

Instead, John Tavares stepped into the spotlight, Jack Campbell was brilliant in his return, and the Toronto Maple Leafs played a great team game to shut down the Edmonton Oilers 4-0 on hockey night in Canada.

The referees let the two teams play last night, and the Leafs put on one of their better 5v5 performances of the season.  Coming in to the game, the Edmonton Oilers were the top offensive team in the league, and were 11-2 in there last 13 games.  Even though the Oilers had the majority of the chances, the Leafs stayed structured and disciplined, and allowed Campbell to shine by earning the shutout against the high flying Oilers attack.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Edmonto Oilers

Tavares stepped into the #1 C spot and performed very well.  He had 2 assists, and a CF% of 59.3 in spite of heavy defensive usage.  The top line of Tavares/Marner/Thornton won the match-up battles all night long and had some nice chemistry. (Naturalstattrick.com).

McDavid was held to one shot and a CF% of 47.2 in over 20 minutes of ice time despite heavy offensive zone start numbers, as the Leafs routinely hemmed him into his own zone and forced him to play defense.

Player of the game goes to Campbell who didn’t need to be outstanding, but he was very calm and steady in 30 saves for the shutout.  He looked surprisingly good despite his long layoff and showed no evidence of rust whatsoever.

An honorable mention goes to Justin Holl, who not only played a very solid game overall, but endeared himself to his teammates in the second period by immediately jumping on Tyler Ennis and pummeling him to the ground after he made contact with Campbell.  This was a scary play that Campbell seemed to recover from without incident, and most likely wasn’t intentional, but Holl took care of business anyway.  Campbell had plenty of protection in this game and it was nice to see.

The goal of the game goes to “Vintage”, aka Jason Spezza, for his beautiful fake-slapper that completely fooled Mike Smith.  I’ve stopped being surprised at the things Spezza does.  He’s basically his own highlight reel considering the limited usage he has, and we’re just lucky to have him.

Chris Johnson said during the second intermission that Matthews probably could have played if necessary, but the team was being cautious with an upcoming schedule of 5 games in 8 days.  Matthews should be back in the next game if all goes well.  The Leafs now lead the division by 6 points, and the battle continues on Tuesday night.

If this was a battle of the giants to win not only the division, but the Hart trophy as well, the Leafs just made a huge statement.  Think of the division title and the MVP as being wrapped up into one trophy that sits in the middle of a table.

At one end of the table is McDavid, at the other end of the table is Matthews, and the trophy slides back and forth like a pendulum depending on individual performances.  Both of these teams go as their superstars go.  The trophy clearly sits in front of Austin Matthews.