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The Maple Leafs extended their winning streak to three games—all against Atlantic rivals—as special teams remained a major asset in a 4-1 win over Montreal.

Your game in 10:

1.   Craig Berube went with John Tavares’ line for the game’s opening shift, and Max Pacioretty concluded said shift by absolutely nailing Kaiden Guhle to the wall with a hard hit. Despite playing just 12:11 a game, Pacioretty leads the Leafs in hits with 40; many of them have been bone-crunching. So far, he’s fully embraced the role of a player who needs to impact the game in ways outside the scoresheet on a night-to-night basis. It was a nice tone-setting moment to start an HNIC rivalry game.

Real-time stats such as hits are unreliable, and their recording varies from rink to rink, but the highest ever hits/60 Pacioretty has recorded in the NHL is 6.8 with Montreal in 2010-11. He’s at 15.16/60 so far this season.

2.  Unfortunately, Pacioretty left the first period with a few minutes left due to a collision and fall that left him grabbing at his hamstring area. This is always the wait-and-see with Pacioretty with his age and injury history. Hopefully, it’s nothing too long-term, and it only serves as a bit of a reminder that conserving/load managing him — especially if he is going to bring this kind of style in the spring — is going to be a worthwhile endeavour in hopes he can be a healthy contributor at playoff time.

If Pacioretty is out for any length of time and Bobby McMann shifts up in his place (as he did tonight), Pacioretty has provided a good template for McMann to follow in terms of the consistent physicality he’s brought to the second line (if a five-time 30+ goal scorer with $62 million in career earnings can do it, why can’t you?). Depending on the timeline, it could also create an opening for Connor Dewar to re-enter the lineup.

3.   After a fairly evenly-contested first 15 minutes or so to the game with much more physicality than Friday night’s tilt vs. Detroit, the Leafs broke through with their first five-on-five goal since the third period of the game in St. Louis on November 2nd, which was a goal by Steven Lorentz. Nine periods of hockey later, the fourth line was on the ice for this one as well.

It started with an intelligent cross-corner dump-in by David Kampf for Lorentz to skate onto. When the Leafs recovered a puck inside the same offensive-zone sequence and cycled it high, Conor Timmins initially fanned on a shot, but it actually ended up sucking Josh Anderson onto the wrong side of the puck as Timmins recovered nicely to turn off the wall into the middle of the ice. From there, Timmins got a friendly deflection in front for his first of the season.

Kampf made a second subtle, smart play at the net front on the play. He recognized Timmins was now freely wheeling in on goal and rotated to the other side of the crease while remaining actively tied up with his check, Christian Dvorak, who the puck actually went in off of. It helped create the open lane for Timmins to walk in and shoot.

4.    There was a shift a few minutes into the game — Timmins’ first of the night — where the Leafs had just sustained a bit of a momentum shift for the Habs. Lane Hutson shot down the wall and beat Knies to the puck, creating a dangerous scoring look. The Habs were establishing a bit of a forecheck, and Timmins made two clean plays into the middle on the same shift to start breakouts. He’s used the middle to break pucks out quite effectively throughout the season; he can confidently and consistently find the tape of a forward in stride.

Combine it with his competitiveness boxing out and finishing checks (which he has the size to do quite well when motivated), and Timmins is giving the Leafs great bottom-pairing minutes right now. In the last six games (4-1-1 for the Leafs), he’s lived in the 17+ minute range every single night, and he’s a plus-five on the season with a goal and three assists all at evens. He does the heavy lifting with the puck for the pairing with Simon Benoit, a duo ahead 4-2 on goals at 5v5 despite high defensive-zone starts. Timmins is making no one think too hard about Liljegren’s departure so far, but we’ll see how he holds up to the rigors of an 82-game schedule as a player with a career-high of 40 games since turning professional in 2019.

5.   Taking some double shifts on the third line with McMann shifting up into Pacioretty’s place on the second, Mitch Marner made a nice flip pass for Pontus Holmberg to skate onto, drawing a penalty off of Guhle. It’s one area the Leafs are doing a better job of offensively at five-on-five recently — not blindly dumping pucks in but putting them into productive areas with stronger probabilities of retrieval.

In a sign of things to come, the Leafs almost scored immediately off the draw when Marner anticipated a rim along the end boards really quickly and set Tavares up in front for a point-blank chance (stopped by Montembault).

On an entry 20 seconds later, William Nylander called his own number with a beautiful entry, move, and finish.

That’s two games in a row where Marner or Nylander just sliced through the entry defense and beat the opposing PK with high-end skill. During their protracted power-play struggles, the Leafs flipped a lot of pucks over to the wall for turnovers, almost as though they were on autopilot during the entries, but a few goals like this will certainly keep opposing PKs honest.

6.  Just a couple of minutes later, Jake McCabe took his eighth penalty of the season — a very soft cross-checking call on Cole Caufield.

The Leafs’ special teams continued to cook, again led by Marner, with an assist to a Keystone Cops routine by the Canadiens on their PP zone entry — a missed drop pass between Matheson and Caufield, plus Kirby Dach falling over, created a 2v1 for Marner and David Kampf.

Marner patiently waited for Suzuki to drop to the ice and sauced one over to Kampf, who was on his weak side and facing away from the net/skating backward. Kampf was opening his body for a potential one-timer, and Marner’s patience with the pass appeared to have run him out of room/shooting angle, but it worked out, as Marner read off of Kampf well to hop inside of Suzuki, take a return pass, and bury an empty-net finish.

Marner is currently highly confident with the puck and is seeing the ice/anticipating the play extremely well over 200 feet.

7.   The Habs’ power play ended up as a saw-off after Montreal scored with 30 seconds left in the Leafs’ kill. A bobbling puck led Tanev to whiff on an initial clearance opportunity, and the goal itself was a mix of some good fortune and a really nice play by Brendan Gallagher to swat a puck out of mid-air. Tanev established body positioning inside of Gallagher and was in the process of tying up his stick, but Gallagher made a nice play on the fluttering puck from waist height.

The Leafs showed no signs of concern back at five-on-five, getting back on the front foot and nearly scoring via the Tavares line. Just three minutes later, the Leafs put the game back in the comfort zone with yet another power-play goal after Matthew Knies drew a penalty in the neutral zone.

8.   Marner continued to stir the drink for the Leafs, this time executing a skillful entry on the PP and then roving around the zone with the puck, waiting for the opening. John Tavares found some space in the middle to get a shot off and collect his own rebound.

If you didn’t take Tavares/Treliving at their word that Tavares was totally on board the captaincy switch and completely unaffected in his attitude and preparation for the season, he’s now up to eight goals and 14 points in his first 15 games. Consummate pro.

The Leafs’ power play is now eight for its last 15 (53.3%), going from 7.9% (32nd) to  20.8% (14th) in just four games, and they’ve done almost all of it without Matthews. More than anything, beyond the shooting percentage spiking massively, the entries are cleaner, and there appears to be much less confusion about roles once they are inside the zone.

9.   You don’t ever want to say a game is over at 4-1 with 27 minutes still to play in the NHL, but this is a bad Habs team in a terrible slump. On the Leafs’ side of things, since their third-period scare in Winnipeg, they have been really stingy when defending leads at five-on-five. In the last six games, they’ve led for 142 minutes of five-on-five time and conceded just one goal. They’re receiving excellent goaltending, as their goalies have stopped 50 of the 51 shots faced at 5v5 when leading in those games.  So long as they kept it disciplined and professional the rest of the way, it would probably be smooth sailing.

Late in the second period, Marner capped a great all-situations performance by negating an OEL tripping penalty (which wasn’t a penalty) just 20 seconds into the kill. It was a good night of discipline for a Leafs team that needed to crack down on the penalties taken; they took just two penalties, and both were really soft calls.

10.   The late second period also featured Max Domi‘s second fight of the season, although it only went down as a roughing call as David Savard wasn’t a willing participant. Savard cross-checked Domi in the ribs earlier in the first period, and he repeatedly took shots at him before the fight, so Savard’s refusal to drop the gloves with a competitor he has four inches on — in a game where his team was now flat and down three goals, no less — was an interesting choice.

The third period featured 24 Montreal shot attempts and just one recorded high-danger chance (per NST). Score effects set in, and the Leafs  — in a back-to-back situation and also down a player — sat back without taking penalties or facing a real threat to the scoreline. Joseph Woll made all 10 saves for 20 in all, nudging the Leafs up to second in the NHL in 5v5 save percentage (.936).

The five-on-five offense isn’t setting anyone’s hair on fire right now, but the Matthews-less Leafs have been really tight defensively, suddenly dominant on special teams, and are receiving elite goaltending.

Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Game Highlights w/ Joe Bowen & Jim Ralph

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