The Toronto Maple Leafs extended their winning streak to four games with a 3-2 overtime win against the Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday night.
The win improves the Toronto Maple Leafs record to 26-13-2, leaving them with 54 points through 41 games played (standings from NHL.com).
The Leafs were able to get offense from the defense core again with goals from Oliver Ekman-Larsson and an overtime winner from Morgan Rielly. Matthew Knies also followed up a five-point night against Boston with another goal tonight.
Dennis Hildeby got his fourth start of the season, stopping 31 of 33 shots, improving his record in the NHL to 3-1-0 (stats from NHL.com).
Maple Leafs win physical game
It was a very physical and entertaining game throughout two periods. We saw multiple big hits from Pacioretty, Benoit and Myers while Jake McCabe fought Garnet Hathaway after Hathaway ran into Hildeby. McCabe did leave the game and didn't return with an upper-body injury following the fight.
Losing McCabe for a long time would be brutal for this team, so hopefully we will get positive news on him soon.
The third period was quieter, with neither team generating much offensively. In overtime, Hildeby made a couple of big saves before Morgan Rielly won it for the Leafs off a pass from Auston Matthews.
I was interested to see how Matthews would perform in his second game back from his injury. I thought before the game against Boston we would see him play one of these two games, but he suited up for both, and I thought he looked great. His physicality was noticeable, and it was the quickest he's looked all year. That is a great sign for the Leafs if this is the Matthews we will see for the rest of the season.
The biggest story out of this game is the Leafs getting production from the blue line today. It has been a big problem all year for this team, which has struggled to produce offense and tonight the defense core was able to produce two goals and an assist.
When you go on deep runs in the playoffs, you need people chipping in all over the roster. If the defense core can improve even slightly, that could be huge. You are currently getting scoring from the top end of your forward core along with scoring from the bottom six recently. I still want Treliving to make a move to get a second or third-line centre to help with more scoring, but recently there hasn't been much to complain about from this team.
Taking four points from the back-to-back against Boston and Philadelphia is very impressive, especially when you factor in the fact they played their third-string goalie. Hildeby played well today, but he is always a question mark for me when he plays NHL games. They've given themselves a four-point lead over Florida, but the Panthers do have a game at hand.
The next game the Leafs play will be on Tuesday against the Flyers again, this time in Philadelphia.