Toronto Maple Leafs: Timothy Liljegren Picks Up Where He Left Off

The Toronto Maple Leafs hosted the Boston Bruins in a game that meant everything.

Sure, you can beat the Philadelphia Flyers about as thoroughly as it’s possible to beat an NHL team, but they stink.  For the Toronto Maple Leafs to really show that they are who we thought they were, they needed to show that they could handle the Boston Bruins.

And they did.

Pretty easily, in fact.

There was really no doubt who was the better team last night, and despite an unfortunately injury to Ilya Samsonov, this was the best game of the year so far.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Boston

The line of William Nylander, Alex Kerfoot and John Tavares was untouchable.

I’ve wanted so badly to promote Nick Robertson to the top six, and I think the Leafs did too, but we were perhaps a bit hasty.  The Leafs top prospect might help more from a lower spot in the lineup, because breaking up a line this good should be criminal.

The Leafs had to host a 10-1 team, and they didn’t fold even when Samsonov went down. That’s great, but If I have one complaint about this game, it’s the coaching, specifically player deployment.

The Leafs were at home, with last change, and they barely got Kampf out against the Bruins’ top line. Instead the Leafs played best vs best and came out wanting, and all three members of the Leafs top line were below water in corsi, shots, scoring chances and expected goals.

Ironically, given Matthews’ puck-luck so far this year, the Leafs won their minutes 1-0.

The other thing I wasn’t a huge fan of was how they turtled for the whole third period. Sure, Samsonov was injured and they don’t trust Kallgren.  And sure, they ended up winning, but they didn’t create any offense and played passively the whole period.

Letting the other team have  the puck 82% of the time isn’t exactly the best way to protect a lead.  Although, to their credit, the dangerous chances at 5v5 in the third were listed as 0-0.   That is good, but 11 minutes of the third period were not played 5v5, and the Burins did have four dangerous chances against Kallgren. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

They were lucky to close this game out, but they were also unlucky not to enter the third period with a bigger lead.  They were very, very good in the first two periods, and they played a great shut-down third, don’t’ get me wrong.  I am just not a fan of basically taking the best tools away from your best players for 20 minutes.

One last thing: Timothy Liljegren made his season debut, and had a spectacular game.

Paired mostly with Morgan Rielly, the most common forward  he had to play against was David  Pasternak. Playing almost 16 5v5 minutes, Liljegren posted a 66% Corsi-for while the Leafs outshot Boston 11-4 with him on the ice.

The Leafs won his minutes (1-0) and he posted a ridiculous 77% expected-goals, going up against one of the best players in the NHL all night.

I am not going to panic about goalies, because goalies are too unpredictable to spend time worrying about.  Liljegren back is a major factor for the Leafs going forward, and they just outplayed and defeated the league’s current (but not for long) best team.

Also, Denis Malgin is a constant threat from the bottom-of-the-lineup, and once again, he looked pretty much amazing.