Toronto Maple Leafs Cruise Past Oilers + Ilya Samsonov Avoids Serious Injury

How about Bobby McMann? The Toronto Maple Leafs 27-year-old rookie opened the scoring four minutes in the first period last night against the Edmonton Oilers and went on to record his third career three-point game.

The Toronto Maple Leafs jumped out to a five-goal lead thanks to two goals from McMann, two from Pontus Holmberg and one from William Nylander through the first two periods.

The Oilers finally struck back scoring three straight goals in the third period, but it was all for not as Auston Matthews iced the game with a full-ice empty netter for his 68th goal of the season.

The Leafs held on for a 6-3 win. (All Stats FromNaturalStatTrick).

The Toronto Maple Leafs Avoid Disaster and Get Big Win

Despite the scoreboard, the Maple Leafs did not dominate that game, the Oilers finished with 39 shots on goal and had six more high-danger scoring chances than the Maple Leafs.

The big story tonight, in multiple ways, was Ilya Samsonov. He made 34 saves in the win before leaving the game with what appeared to be a lower-body injury.

Following the game, Sheldon Keefe confirmed that Samsonov is fine and that the injury "is not as bad as it looked", which is huge news considering Joseph Woll has been shaky at best since returning from injury.

Despite multi-point performances from Liljegren, McMann, Holmberg, Matthews and William Nylander, the Maple Leafs trade deadline acquisition Joel Edmundson ended up with the MVP belt in the Maple Leafs locker room after the game, though it was his partner Timothy Liljegren who led all Leafs D in game-score (see chart above).

Edmundson led all Maple Leafs skaters in on-ice expected goal percentage, scoring chance and high-danger chance percentage at five-on-five. He also impacted the game beyond the stat sheet by coming out playing a physical game, starting with throwing a big hit on Connor McDavid early in the first period, then dragging Leon Draisaitl to the penalty box with him following a post-whistle scrum while the Oilers were on the powerplay.

The Maple Leafs went on to kill the rest on Connor Timmins minor penalty while Edmundson and Draisaitl were in the box and that penalty kill sparked the Maple Leafs fourth and fifth goals in the second half of the second period.

It was a good thing the Maple Leafs jumped out to a huge lead as Connor McDavid got it going in the third period tallying three assists in the third period, one of which went to former Maple Leafs Zach Hyman who scored his 49th goal of the season, which is second most in the NHL behind Auston Matthews.

Granted it was five goals, it was encouraging the Maple Leafs hold off the Oilers late third period push after getting dominated in the scoring chances for much of the game. Despite this the Maple Leafs did not give up a goal at five-on-five only surrendering two goals on the penalty kill and one on a shot where Samsonov got injured while trying to make the save when the Oilers had their goalie pulled.

Regardless of the shot totals, it felt like the Maple Leafs had full control of this game from the opening minute. Yes, you'd like to see them limit scoring chances a little better, but they did that early only giving up six shots in the first period. In the NHL it is almost 100% guaranteed that if there is a 3-0 lead, the losing team will start to put up great stats - the season is just too much of a grind to play at full throttle when you're sure to win.

Going into the second period the Maple Leafs were up three goals and could afford to be a little more passive defending the lead. The Maple Leafs did a great job weathering the storm late in the game to close out the win against one of the best teams in the NHL.

They don't get to celebrate the win for long as the Maple Leafs are back in action tonight against another Stanley Cup contender in the Carolina Hurricanes. The Maple Leafs will seek revenge after losing 5-4 to the Hurricanes in a shootout on March 16th.