The Toronto Maple Leafs, bizarrely left for dead not a month into the season, showed their critics why it might not be such a good idea to write them off just yet.
Tail-spinning to an (all things considered) respectable .500 record after playing an AHL goalie three times, and having their best players (especially Matthews and Rielly) going absolutely ice-cold to to start the year, the Toronto Maple Leafs had to make a statement. .
Management wasn’t going to make it for them, so the players had to speak for themselves with their play.
And what a statement it was.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Play Their Best Game, With Their Backs to the Wall
Despite playing out-of-their minds vs Tampa last year in game 7, the Leafs best players got no credit for their strong performance with everything on the line simply because Andrei Vasilevskiy was an unstoppable force. (stats naturalstattrick.com).
Tonight they got another chance to perform with everything on the line, because I think someone might have gotten fired if they lost to the Flyers. Either that or I’ve been mainlining way too much Kypreos lately.
Bottom line: it was pretty much a game that had to show a certain je ne sais quoi or else.
Granted it was against the Flyers, and granted that many of their best players were missing from the lineup, it was still a fine showing. Better than fine, actually. But don’t take my word for it, check the numbers:
The Leafs had possession of the puck for almost 70% of the game, had 62% of the shots, and had 13 dangerous scoring chances while allowing just three. The Leafs were expected to score 71% of the goals based on their play, which a very unusually high number for an NHL game. More importantly, they outscored the Flyers 3-1 at 5v5.
The Flyers received six power-plays, and the Leafs spent over ten minutes short-handed, allowing just the one goal. That’s a good night for the PK.
Samsonov was spectacular once again. You can’t count on great goaltending, but it’s nice to have.
Tavares’s hattrick was obviously nice to see, he now has 7 goals in 11 games.
Matthews played great, but lost his minutes 5v5 (1-0). The Leafs are now a team with a winning record despite losing the minutes Auston Matthews has played so far this year. He is one of the players who has played the most out of the entire league, and the Leafs are down by three goals so far on the year when plays.
And despite that, they have a winning record, which suggests extremely good things about the rest of this season.
Lines
I like that Keefe put the Kerfoot-Tavares-Nylander line back together. I was all for Nick Robertson going there, but the trickle down effect on the lineup was disasters. Kerfoot scored 50 points at 5v5 last year, which is amazing. He is crazy-underrated.
But Robertson deserves a shot. Kerfoot can’t be a fourth liner. So the Kampf/Engvall line also gets broken up, even though it was a huge part of last season’s success.
With Kerfoot back on L2, and Robertson on the bench, the Leafs had their best game.
Kampf played with Aston-Reese and Malgin. The results were spectacular. Malgin is awesome. He can skate and he’s got ridiculous moves for a guy on the 3rd or 4th line.
For the first time all year, in my opinion at least, the Leafs had a bottom-six line with that was clearly winning their minutes, making things happen and building energy for the team. The Leafs are a much harder team to play against if this somewhat unusual mix of defense, toughness, skill and speed stays becomes a regular feature I wouldn’t be surprised.
The Jarnkrok, Engvall and Holmberg lines was effective, I like the idea of those three together. They should play relatively safe minutes that they consistently win and help out the team over time. Not like Keefe won’t constantly shuffle lines, but the more known quantities you have the better.
All in all, tonight’s game really showed what the Toronto Maple Leafs are capable of when they play well. We know they can still post a winning record just by showing up, but if they somehow harness what they did tonight and continue doing it they’ll be unstoppable.