The Toronto Maple Leafs made it six in a row after dropping six on the hapless Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Centre on Saturday night.
Thoughts in note form:
– It feels a little odd to suggest that the goaltender was the first star in his team’s six-goal win, but Frederik Andersen’s performance was pivotal as far as setting the stage for this victory. It was obvious he was dialled in early when he held onto a Shea Weber one-timer with no rebound four minutes into the first period as a desperate Habs team mounted their 7-0 run in shots to open the game. Andersen was the Leafs‘ best player in the opening 40 minutes up until the Leafs took the game over in the third period – big, efficient, and absorbing pucks all night.
The confidence was visible in his puck-handling, too. Andersen had two quick-ups in the first period that fed the transition, including a beautiful hail mary pass to Mitch Marner at the offensive blue line. He then picked up an assist on the Nazem Kadri goal with a quick outlet pass to Patrick Marleau.
Just like that, with consecutive shutouts and four straight wins, Andersen is up to a .913 save percentage. Four games ago, following the win over Vegas, he was sitting at .895.
– The line shakeup midway through the game struck some on Twitter as curious given the score line and the strange-looking Martin – Matthews – Marner combination, but the Leafs were in the middle of a really ugly five-six minute stretch in the first half of the middle frame. It started with a few icings and lost d-zone draws. Pretty quickly, all four lines had poor shifts in succession, with the Leafs failing to break out and turning pucks over repeatedly. Babcock also couldn’t have liked how the matchups were shaking out, as the Bozak line drew Drouin, Pacioretty and Galchenyuk a number of times and it was starting to get pretty dicey.
The penalty on the Shea Weber hit on Hyman came as much-needed relief, but the power play was sloppy and didn’t generate any momentum whatsoever. At the end of that PP, Babcock rolled out Komarov, Moore and Hyman followed by Martin, Matthews and Marner. He then settled on these lines and we never saw the original trios again:
Martin-Matthews-Marner
Komarov-Kadri-Nylander
van Riemsdyk-Bozak-Moore
Hyman-Marleau-Brown
Not how he drew it up before the game, but it seemed to serve its purpose by waking up his group.
– Dominic Moore looked pretty good on the wing with Bozak and JVR after the change, making a few skilled plays in the offensive zone in the third period. I’m not sure he’s got a long leash from Babcock at center at the present time (the fourth line, in general, has been in flux). Last night, he won two of three draws in the defensive zone, but it’s worth noting he’s started 32% of his shifts in the offensive zone (lowest among Leafs forward regulars) and is winning just 42.5% of his draws there.
– Zach Hyman has been everything you could reasonably ask for so far this season – this isn’t an indictment of his play or placement in the lineup — but it was interesting to get a glimpse at him on his strong side (right wing) after Babcock shook up his lines. A small example below:
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Rather than dump it in as he would on his off side, he’s able to carry the puck in, drive wide, loop around the net, and feed the point for a shot on goal. Hyman is certainly effective at puck recovery when he chips, chases, and gets the D turning. He is right up there as one of the Leafs’ fastest straight-line skaters (on a very fast team), and can really hustle down pucks. But he’s also able to take advantage of his speed a little more off the rush when he’s on the right, where, naturally, he’s a more capable puck handler and can make plays a little easier.
– Not going to get bent out of shape if Mitch Marner isn’t on Matthews wing to start the game against Arizona (which Babcock has already guaranteed he won’t be). Seems to me Matthews-Nylander has been pretty good together. It would be nice to see him go to that duo more often when the team isn’t up to much, though.
– Max Pacioretty summed up the Leafs like so after the game:
Eventually, that team is going to make you pay. They just have so much offence that is able to come wave after wave. When they were able to get that first one, they built off it and it just seemed like too much. We weren’t able to recover.
To demonstrate his point: Connor Brown just scored his eighth goal – a 31-goal pace – and he started the game on the fourth line. Brown is one of five Leafs on pace for 30+ goals and William Nylander — who owns the second best shot on the team — isn’t among them. Matthews (55, lol), JVR (41), Kadri (39), Marleau (31) are the other four.
– Speaking of Pacioretty, not a good look for the captain when he failed to stop on the puck prior to Ron Hainsey’s 1-0 goal.
– As much as the Leafs can just blow games open with their offense, it was also striking how fragile the Habs’ psyche is right now. They played a good first 30 minutes only to concede two goals quickly – the second of which (Kadri’s goal) Charlie Lindgren definitely should have stopped. In need of a big third, they were outshot 8-1 to start the period and the Leafs left them in the dust.
It didn’t help that the crowd had already seen enough at 2-0. The Habs pushed back right after Kadri’s goal with a dangerous-looking o-zone shift, only for Jeff Petry to overskate the puck, allowing the Leafs to clear the zone. Andrew Shaw then bobbled the puck on a developing 2-on-1 at the offensive blue line shortly after. It didn’t take much for the audible groans and scattered boos to surface in the Bell Centre crowd, even at 2-0.
(Then again, if the GM of my favourite team signed Karl Alzner to that contract so he could defend like he did on the JVR goal, I might boo, too.)
– Not sure how Nazem Kadri wound up with a penalty for his hit on Shea Weber. It’s not against the rules to get angry and throw a hit. Unlike the Pacioretty hit that set Kadri off, the hit was definitely clean – shoulder to shoulder – and the refs agreed it was legal. He then got jumped by a Weber and Jordie Benn double team and turtled to protect himself, with no punches thrown on his part. What was the roughing penalty for?
That was quite the sequence there from Kadri, who got his revenge within the rules and drew a power play for his team (and emerged from the brawl with blood on the back of his jersey, somehow). He’s quietly now up to 10 goals on the season and has a six-game points streak currently active.
– Connor Carrick‘s 16:52 was a season high. He finished a plus-two, with a 51% CF on 27% offensive zone starts. His minutes have ticked upward in each of the past three games. Too early to say for sure, but he might be earning some of Babcock’s trust back little by little here.
– Hockey is better with Auston Matthews.
