Toronto Maple Leafs win as Mitch Marner continues his MVP run

The Toronto Maple Leafs hosted the Utah Hockey Club last night, and thanks to another incredible performance by superstar Mitch Marner, they won their seventh of eight games without Captain Auston Matthews.

The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated Utah 3-2 on Sunday night, in a hardfought, overall excellent game in which they were the better team and in which the Nylander Brothers made their debut as a duo.

The Leafs started Joseph Woll who earned the start on the strength of a shutout Wednesday against Las Vegas, and he did not disappoint.

The Leafs have ridden what is pretty much the best goaltending in the NHL so far this year to a first place spot in the Atlantic, and with the win on Sunday they increased their lead to 3 points over the Florida Panthers.

Toronto Maple Leafs win as Mitch Marner continues his MVP run

The Leafs were by far the better team on Sunday, and Mitch Marner was by far the best player on the ice. Marner had two goals, including one on the power-play, and a ridiculous 78% Expected Goals rating. It is absolutely preposterous that he is not signed, ridiculous answers on "the Quiz" not withstanding.

Marner now has multi-point games in 7 of the last 8 games, and is 13th in NHL scoring with 28 points, only seven points back of the league lead. Since the start of November he's only scored 2 points less than Connor McDavid, who leads the NHL in that time.

Marner's scoring is decieving because the Leafs basically didn't score at all on the power-play for the first month and a half of the season, and he's scoring at the lowest 5v5 rate of his career since his sophomore season. The recent two-points-per-game scoring can't be sustained, but Marner could still reasonably make a run for the Art Ross once Matthews is back and once he starts scoring at a better 5v5 rate.

The Leafs did score a power-play goal tonight, but they could have put the game to bed by scoring on a very long two-man advantage in the second period. When they didn't score, Utah was able to climb back into the game and make it close, but still, the scoreboard makes this game seem closer than it was.

The Minten, Grebenkin, Alex Nylander line didn't get much action, but Minten did get on the Power-Play and almost scored, while the snake-bitten Robertson had a few chances and didn't look bad at all. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

The Leafs didn't really have any bad players last night, but OEL/Rielly was pretty disapointing overall and it's becoming clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that OEL isn't suited to top-four minutes at this point in his career. His hot start is fading from memory and he's just not looking good as Rielly's partner.

Overall though, great game by the Leafs and an even better result.