Light Up the Board
Game 18: Sens vs. Leafs
Simon B
The Game
The first thing that I noticed at the start of the game was that Alex Kerfoot was playing wing on a line with John Tavares and William Nylander. Normally, Kerfoot is centering the third line with some different players rotating around him. However, last season, Kerfoot got a few stints playing on the wing and he looked much better there. That was once again the case last night. The Leafs got two power plays early on. In the first, they were starting to heat up but they couldn't get one past Ottawa's netminder Marcus Hoberg. On the second, Marner put a nice cross-ice pass onto Auston Matthews' stick (I've said that more than a few times). Matthews fires a bullet right through Hoberg and the Leafs got the important first goal. Toronto kept the pressure on after the Matthews goal and things weren't looking too good for the Senators. It got even worse for Ottawa when, on a pretty routine save, Marcus Hoberg looked like he pulled a muscle in his leg and he had to leave the game. Matt Murray (the usual starter) came in to finish off the rest of the game. The Leafs had another great offensive shift and this one ended with Joe Thornton deflecting a Jake Muzzin point shot past Murray to get his third goal of the season (and second in 3 since returning from injury).
With about two minutes remaining in the period, Tim Stutzle made a really nice move to cut in towards Hutchinson and then rifle it top-corner to pull the Sens back to within one. Now not to say that it was an easy shot to save but I'm pretty sure if Andersen is in net, that shot isn't going in. I was about to say: that's another bad end-of-period goal allowed by the Leafs but in the dying seconds of the frame, Marner to Matthews once again (you'd think that the opposing team's defense would notice that those two are really good at hockey by now) wide open and he tucks it past Murray to put the Leafs up 3-1 going to break.
The second period starts and it's the third line out on the ice (that line had been getting better of late after being a bit slow to start February. Ilya Mikheyev had the puck in the high slot and took a Matthews-like shot and it went right through all the screens in front of the net and the Leafs are now up by three. Again, excellent response shifts by Toronto with lost of offensive zone pressure are putting the Sens on their heels a bit. Sheldon Keefe sends out the Matthews line again (because why not) and Mitch Marner sees an opening and dances past Mike Rielly and goes high short-side on Murray to make it 5-1. Yes, last time the Leafs had a 5-1 lead they blew it but they've learned their lesson and it won't happen again. Then Connor Brown sniped one past Hutchinson and every Leafs fan on earth panicked because "It's happening again." But remember the question I asked at the beginning of this article. Which Leafs will show up tonight? The following shifts answered that question pretty easily. After brilliantly killing a penalty, Toronto had all kinds of momentum in the Sens zone and Jason Spezza took a really smart shot-for-a-rebound (which is when you shoot not to score but to get a rebound a generate a scoring chance) and Willy Nylander was on the doorstep to pick up the loose change and get his first goal in eight games. The Leafs continued to trample all over the Sens for the rest of the period. All four lines were excellent and I was feeling much more confident about this four-goal lead than the last.
At the start of the third period, Ottawa was really trying to generate some kind of offense but Toronto did a great job of shutting down almost every opportunity they had. Even the highly-criticized Miachel Hutchinson made some good saves when he had to.
An important theme to this season for the Leafs has been to "make your own luck." But this was just a pure fluke. Drake Batherson put a really weak shot across the crease and it deflected off Mikko Lehtonen and past Hutchinson. Lehtonen didn't do anything wrong there (he was in position and doing the right thing) it's just an unlucky bounce. With that, it's 6-3. I really liked what Sheldon Keefe did in the later stages of the third. John Tavares has gone eight games without a goal and he's been losing a good amount of confidence and it's visible. So with the game almost in the bag, Keefe sent out Tavares with a few different combinations of wingers to see if that would help break the goalless drought. It did. Tavares found an open lane to shoot through and finally he gets his goal and you could see the relief on his face when that goal went in.
The Wrap
That was one of the most complete team efforts I've seen by the Leafs this season. And since I'm a bit of a stats nerd, I have a pretty interesting stat to prove it. Six different Leafs had at least two points last night. That really shows the depth this group has when they're at their best. Up next: a Saturday night clash with the Habs who are coming off an entire week off so this should be an interesting one
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Photos courtesy of the NHL on YouTube and Sportsnet Television Network
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