William Nylander Incredible As Toronto Maple Leafs Remain Hot

It may not appear as a particularly dominating win on paper, but the Toronto Maple Leafs managed a hard-fought and well-deserved 2-1 OT win over the visiting Calgary Flames last night buoyed by another strong performance by leading-scorer William Nylander.

Nylander looked to have tied the game for the Toronto Maple Leafs late in the third period on a sweet one-timer from a nifty Kerfoot pass but the goal was eventually credited to Ondrej Kase (his 3rd of the year). Nevertheless it was Nylander, with several quality chances and an additional assist on Auston Matthews’ overtime game-winner, who stood out as the game’s first star in this contest.

Toronto, who have been struggling to start a lot of their games with urgency, looked quick and engaged from the opening face-off, but couldn’t get a puck past Flames back-up goalie (and Star Wars villain) Dan Vladar until Kase’s marker evened the score with roughly seven minutes left in the game.

Mitch Marner was flying all game (though he’d definitely like to re-play his backchecking on the Kylington-Gaudreau two-on-one goal) and Matthews (24+ minutes played, 10-5 on the draw) also stood out, as did Jack Campbell, who delivered another rock-solid performance with 30 saves, including some especially difficult stops in the overtime frame (all stats are from hockey-reference.com).

Toronto Maple Leafs Win Seven of last Eight Games

As has been case for most of the season, it was the William Nylander show last night. With two assists Nylander now leads the team with 7 goals and 15 points in as many games. Kase’s tip may have prevented Nylander from getting the game-tying goal but already on the season Willie has four game-winners, twice as many as both Matthews and Marner. His 24 game-winners as a Leafs (3 more than Marner but still quite a ways from Matthews’ 37) are pretty impressive numbers for a player that is often maligned for his perceived poor play and lack of effort.

Up next for the Leafs

Toronto gets right back on the ice tonight on the road against Buffalo. The Sabres, devoid of any real household names on the roster, have surprised this year with a 6-5-2 record and is the type of team that can give this Leafs squad fits. Toronto needs to be engaged from the start and can’t let themselves get outworked and outhustled.

Scoring from the bottom-six or from the defense is sorely missing this year (Spezza and Kase have 3 goals apiece, other than that there are a whole lot of binary computer coding digits on the roster) and Toronto will be even better once they start scoring.

The puck drops tonight at 7pm on CBC.