Red Hot Toronto Maple Leafs Just 3 Points Out of 1st Overall

The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the San Jose Sharks to finish November with even more points than they had last November.

The Toronto Maple Leafs won their fifth game in a row as they continue to climb the NHL standings and prove that they are the NHL’s best team. 

The Leafs are on fire, and over their incredible streak they have defeated most of the NHL’s best teams: Vegas, Boston, Pittsburgh *twice*, and Carolina.

Seeing all the haters struggle to come up with complaints about the best version of the Toronto Maple Leafs anyone has seen since the mid-60’s gets more hilarious by the day.  Fun fact: the better the Leafs do, the more I get trolled about spelling mistakes!  If your Nylander hot takes are outdated, you’ve got to have something amiright?

Anyways, it’s all in good fun anyways.  When Kyle Dubas and William Nylander are humiliating their critics on a daily basis, I would bet that even those guys are having a fun time, being Leafs fans and all.

At this point, the only way the Leafs can get any better is if the NHL moves the playoffs to November on a permanent basis.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Sharks

My main focus on tonight’s game was watching Nick Robertson.  He has sat out a ton of games lately, but more because the team got hot while he was out than any fault in his game.

He’s a fast, tenacious player who never quits on a play.  It won’t take long until he’s one of the most popular players this town has ever seen. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

The Leafs had the edge in shots, puck possession and scoring chances when he was on the ice, and though he didn’t score I thought he was about as good as it’s possible to be when you play with David Kampf and Zach Aston-Reese for most of the night.

For a short time, 3 minutes, he played with Nylander and they had 5 shot attempts to 1 allowed.  This was because Calle Jarnkrok left the game and Nylander was double-shifted.

I thought Giordano and Holl had their best game yet, even though I don’t like them as a pairing at all.   I also thought Hollowell had a great game, while I didn’t notice Mete too much.  Liljegren and Sandin can definitely be better than they were last night.

It was obviously great to see Marner extend his point streak, and Matthews to score again 5v5. It was a little concerning that Matthews only took one shot at 5v5.

Nylander was the game’s best player, and it’s ridiculous that he’s the third best player on any team.  More ridiculous is that we take that for granted and barely  talk about it.  Nylander didn’t have any points last night but he ripped one off the post, and also was robbed when his top-corner snipe was stopped by the shaft of the goalie’s stick.

A nice return to the lineup for Ilya Samsonov as well.  The Toronto Maple Leafs now have two days off before they play Tampa on Saturday night.