Take the Points and Run

 Game 17: Sens vs. Leafs Simon B

What version of the Leafs will we see tonight? The "I don't wanna play" Leafs or the team that looks like it can win a Stanley Cup? After a pathetic collapse against the Senators' last game, I was expecting the Leafs to come out flying and hungry for revenge. Well, they sorta did but let's talk about it.

Before this one, coach Keefe made a few changes to the lines but the lineup stayed the same. Jimmy Vesey was bumped down to the fourth line and Pierre Engvall got the promotion to the third.

The Game

Toronto unexpectedly started this game really flat: almost no scoring opportunities and no shot attempts either. Even the Matthews line was quiet, and that's not something that can be said very often. Ottawa was definitely taking advantage of the slow Leafs’ start, and they were buzzing around Andersen's net for most of the first period. By the tail end of the opening frame, the Senators had taken 16 more shots than the Leafs and were by far the better-looking team to begin this game. Just as the period was about to end, however, Mitch Marner won the puck back at the Sens blueline and threw it down low to Joe Thornton, who showed off some nice stick-handling skill in tight and lost flipped it over the pad of a sprawling Matt Murray. On the second attempt, Thornton jammed it in by pushing Murray's pad in with the puck. The Leafs are now up - wait, no, you can't shove the goalie into the net to score, so the game remained scoreless going into the break. Once again, I was expecting the Leafs to have a quick start to the period but once again I was proved wrong. Ottawa came out flying again until the Leafs got a shot deflected past Matt Murray off the stick of Joe Thronton to break the deal -- nope again! This time, a high stick took away what could've been Thornton's second of the game. Just as I was thinking "they need to have a good response to that," Justin Holl faked a shot and slid a nice pass over to Auston Matthews who buried his 14th of the campaign to finally (on their third goal) put the Leafs up by one.

After that, the Leafs woke up! Lots of pressure all over the ice. The Tavares line (which has been criticized lately for its lackluster performances) looked solid as well. All was good in Leafland until another end-of-period goal by Brady Tkachuk (Matthew Tkachuck's brother) that tied the game at one apiece going into the third. Right at the start of the third period, the Sens' Erik Gudbransson took a high-sticking penalty to give the Leafs their second power play of the night. They had one of the slowest? power plays I've seen this season. But then they did something I write about a lot: they had a good response shift. After a bad power play, usually, the team that is killing the penalty gains some confidence, but this time it went the other way around. The third line was putting all kinds of pressure in the Ottawa zone. Alex Kerfoot was in the right place at the right time to bank in a loose puck off the post, then Matt Murray's helmet, then in. The game never got very interesting after that. The Leafs only had to dodge a little surge at the end of the game when the Sens pulled their goalie. No empty netter though, and the game ended 2-1. The Wrap

     One big thing in this game was that the officiating was really inconsistent. There were pretty obvious missed calls and there were a lot of weak calls against both teams. Nevertheless, the Leafs won the game and that's all that needed to be done. Sure, it was an ugly win but 2 points are 2 points, and come playoff time, the question not "how?" but "how many?"

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