Toronto Maple Leafs Play Awful, Get the Win Regardless

The Toronto Maple Leafs did not have a good game.

With two of their two three centres out of the lineup, the Toronto Maple Leafs were no match for at the New Jersey Devils, but somehow managed to pull out a win anyway.

Ilya Samsonov had a pretty good night.

Auston Matthews woke up long enough to score the game winner on the power play.

More often than not when the best team doesn’t win,  it’s the Leafs who are the better team and end up losing, but last night they caught a couple breaks and pulled a victory from the jaws of defeat.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs New Jersey Devils

The Devils had 56% of the shot-attempts, and 60% of the scoring chances, but where they really outdid the Leafs was with dangerous scoring chances. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

The Devils had 15 dangerous chances, the Leafs had 4.  That is a really awful game for the Leafs.  Luckily, Ilya Samsonov leads the NHL in 5v5 high-danger save percentage with an .898 % while second place Linus Ullmark has an .881%.  (Jeremy Swagman is ahead of them both, but has played 33% less minutes than Samsonov).

Without two of their top three centres, the Leafs were a huge underdog in this game, and that was obvious from the get-go.  After one period the shots were (I think) 15-5, and the Leafs weren’t even credited with a hit.

Other than when David Kampf was on the ice, the Leafs were pretty much garbagio in this one.

I was interested to see how Sam Lafferty would do on the second line.  The answer was awful – 33% Expected Goals,  yet, luckily, as was the case for most Leafs last night, he still managed to win his minutes.

So….what can you say? Sure they were without Tavares and O’Reilly, but if the coach made a better lineup they might have played a better game.

Either way, they got lucky and will hopefully pick it up for their next game, which is Saturday against the Oilers.