Disaster Strikes in Boston for the Toronto Maple Leafs

The Toronto Maple Leafs made lemonade out of lemons last night when they turned one of their worst games of the season into a magical come-from-behind victory.

Team MVP (so far) Mitch Marner had two goals, including the overtime winner, and the Toronto Maple Leafs escaped Boston with an improbable victory.

The only problem? It cost them two of their best players.

Chris Tanev played under a minute before leaving for good in the first period, and William Nylander did not play in overtime. (stats and standings naturalstattrick.com).

Disaster Strikes in Boston for the Toronto Maple Leafs

The Leafs could get by, if they had to, for a while at least, without William Nylander. Hey, if he can be injured until the second week of April, I wouldn't even mind it one bit. (a la Kucherov or Stone).

But if Chris Tanev is out for any length of time, they are in big, big trouble.

The Leafs blue-line is old and outside of Tanev, it's not that good. Jake McCabe and Morgan Rielly are nice players, but Chris Tanev is the most important player on the Leafs blue-line by far.

If Tanev is out for any length of time, that is bad news. However, as long as he's back for the playoffs, which, the Leafs are more or less a guaranteed to make, there's nothing to worry about.

As for the actual game, it was garbage until Mitch Marner decided to take it over.

The Leafs had a terrible first period where they barely even had a scoring chance. The pass from Lohrei to Pastrnak was bonkers and will be on the list of best goals from this season, but otherwise the first period was uneventful.

The Leafs were much better in the second, and the third. Though, when they opened up the game to try and come back they did allow Boston a ton of sweet chances, but Stolarz stood tall and the Leafs pulled out a victory.

Lost in the injury news is the fact that the Leafs just buried their arch rival with last night's victory. The Leafs came into the game with an astounding 11 point lead on the Bruins, and it could have been nine if the lost in regulation, or 13 if they won in regulation.

Since the game went to OT, the Leafs are now 12 points ahead of the Bruins with a game in hand. That's a 6.5 game lead if we're using the (much better) MLB way of tracking standings.

With 24 games to go, if the Leafs went just 12-12, and Boston went on a crazy 18-7 run, the two teams would finish tied in the standings. That would require the Bruins to play at a .722 clip, which only Winnipeg is currently doing.

The Ducks are 26th overall and have a .500 points-percentage. Therefore, in order for Boston to catch Toronto, the Leafs would have to play like the Ducks and the Bruins would have to play like the Jets for the rest of the season. It's a similar, if not so stark, situation for Ottawa, Columbus or New York to catch the Leafs.

That surely isn't happening. Congratulations Toronto, you've made the playoffs.