To say that Toronto Maple Leafs superstar Mitch Marner had a good day yesterday would be a bit of understatement.
Not only did the Toronto Maple Leafs forward get named to Team Canada earlier in the day, but he was once again the Leafs best player as he scored three points on the way to an impressive 3-2 victory Wednesday night.
Auston Matthews had two goals, and Joseph Woll also played great - he would have taken a shutout into the third if not for a completely fluke goal that bounced weirdly off the end boards and ended up in the back of his net during the first period.
Not to put to fine a point on it, but the Toronto Maple Leafs are absolutely on fire.
The Toronto Maple Leafs triumph yet again - they are unbeatable
The Leafs recieved goals from John Tavares and William Nylander, as well as the aformentioned two scored by Captain Auston Matthews. Weirdly, despite the fact there could have been eight assists in total, only Knies and Rielly had assists other than Marner's three.
The Leafs won and once again their stars bailed them out with some goals and they got amazing goaltending. However, under the hood, the. numbers were not that great.
The Nashville Predators had the puck more, they had eight more scoring chances and nearly doubled the Leafs total of dangerous chances. Much like the previous game against Chicago, if the Leafs lost this game there would be questions about why they weren't looking better againt a bad team.
That said, good teams have talent that overcomes the fact that you can't just grind out great performance after great perfornance for 82 straight games.
Two key areas where the Leafs could get instant improvment are on defense and the fourth line. The OEL / Rielly wasn't working at all, and with Jake McCabe taking another game after the scary incident the other night where he was hit in the neck with a shot, Craig Berube elected to try to get OEL going by pairing him with Chris Tanev.
It didn't go well. At all. OEL was once again the Leafs worst defenseman, and he even managed to make Chris Tanev look bad. OEL finished the night with a 37% xGoals rating (naturalstattrick.com).
Ryan Reaves was predictably terrible, and it's embarassing the Leafs keep dressing him. Just ridiculous with Steeves, and A. Nylander as options.
For the Leafs, the win was their third in a row, but it was also their seventh win in their last eight games, and it was their tenth win in their last 12 games.