A fast start, including two power-play goals, and Joseph Woll’s heroics (right to the final milliseconds) were enough for the Maple Leafs to hold onto a 4-3 win and sweep the season series against the Edmonton Oilers. 

Your game in 10:

1.   This had the makings of a William Nylander type of game from early on, as the Oilers are an aggressive team offensively that will take more than their fair share of chances up the ice, leaving themselves vulnerable at times in transition. With Mattias Ekholm out sick and Darnell Nurse, Brett Kulak, and John Klingberg all playing over 20 minutes apiece, there were going to be opportunities available.

The Oilers largely dictated play early, but Nylander went on a breakaway on the counterattack a minute and a half in. He tested Klingberg’s surgically repaired hip (it did not pass) and turned him into a pretzel with a simple move for a great chance in tight on Skinner.

Nylander fired the Leafs‘ first three shots on goal of the night, the third of which opened the scoring six minutes into the game. As we’ve seen on many 1v1 situations with opposing goaltenders, Nylander is so good at reading the openings on goalies; he did the same here with a quick wrister through traffic that found the right side of Skinner’s net as he peeked to his left, with Max Pacioretty providing a quality screen in front.

That was goal #30 in game #52 for Nylander — a 47-goal pace after six goals in his last seven. It wasn’t that long ago that Phil Kessel’s status as a perennial 30+ goal scorer was viewed as a special thing in Toronto. Now, we regularly see the likes of Matthews or Nylander break 30 goals 50-some-odd games into the regular season. It can’t be taken for granted.


2.  The Maple Leafs had scored more than one power-play goal in a road game a total of one time this season before tonight’s game — in the comeback in Montreal two weeks ago.

In a tough building where the ice was largely tilted against them, capitalizing on two early power-play opportunities was massive for the Leafs in this game. One of the calls was earned by Pontus Holmberg, who is drawing a remarkable 1.92 penalties per 60 minutes of five-on-five hockey (14 total), sixth in the NHL among forwards with 20 or more games played.

The two goals came off the one coherent plan of attack the team’s power play has shown with some degree of consistency this season: Marner, Matthews, or Nylander funneling pucks into the net-front area where they have some combination of Knies, Tavares, McMann, and Pacioretty providing traffic and finishing ability in front with their size/strength/skill/shooting in tight.

Both were composed and skillful finishes in tight areas by Bobby McMann and the returning Matthew Knies.


3.   After 20 minutes, the shot attempts were 70% Oilers, but the slot shots were 7-3 Toronto, cycle chances were 7-2 Toronto, and rush chances were 3-0 Toronto. The one glaring blemish from the Leafs‘ perspective was an RNH shorthanded breakaway that Joseph Woll took care of. Woll was busy (14 saves), and the Oilers had plenty of the puck, but two power-play goals, one five-on-five goal, and winning the critical ice battle was a dream road period for the Leafs in a very tough building.

A bunch of factors screamed that this game wasn’t even close to being in hand, though. With Oliver Ekman-Larsson‘s injury-related departure in the first period, the Leafs went down to five defensemen. Two early Leaf power-play goals meant the even-up calls were coming; Edmonton wasn’t handed a penalty in the final 40 minutes (two egregious missed calls in the second period contributed to the Oilers’ momentum/one of their goals — a trip on Tavares and interference on Pacioretty). With the high pace of their game and their puck possession/offensive ability, the Oilers are elite — as in top one in the league — with the long change in the second period. The big push was always going to come.


4.   And come it did. Woll played out of his mind in this second period, stopping 17 of 18 shots on goal (the Leafs registered just five shots), with the goal coming off of a bomb by Evan Bouchard that Woll didn’t have much hope of stopping through traffic. It came shortly after Woll made a 10-bell save on Jeff Skinner.

Max Domi was out of sorts in his own end prior to the goal and did not look particularly interested in getting in the shooting lane. He saw just 3:57 in ice time after the 3-1 Edmonton goal, which was scored just after the midway point of the game (10:34 TOI total). By contrast, Nick Robertson deserves some credit tonight for three noteworthy shot blocks, one particularly painful in the third period.

The balancing act with dropping McMann to the Robertson-Domi line is that, as much as the Leafs do need McMann to help drive their third line, the coach doesn’t trust either of his linemates, and Domi can’t be relied on as a C in any sort of tough situation right now. McMann — who scored earlier on the PP and has a tendency to score in multiples — ended up a bit lost in the shuffle with just 11:23 of ice time.

The balance between McMann’s 11:23 and Pacioretty’s 17:43 seemed a little off, especially considering the shot attempts were 19-5 in favour of the Oilers vs. the Pacioretty – Tavares – Nylander line. If McMann is going to play down there, Berube will need to find more situational opportunities to move McMann up the lineup on nights when Domi and Robertson need to be heavily sheltered.

Obviously, a proper 3C would go a long way toward solving this conundrum, opening up all sorts of possibilities as the Leafs try to establish three credible lines.


5.   The Leafs’ top line had been relatively quiet as a unit at five-on-five but came up with a huge goal to start the third period. The second period started at four-on-four, but for both the first and third frames, Kris Knoblauch opted to send out his second line (with RNH, Hyman, and Arvidsson) for the opening draw against Knies-Matthews-Marner / McCabe-Tanev, hunting softer matchups for the McDavid-Draisaitl line where he could. The top line needed to come up with a moment — a nice ice-tilting shift to start a period, at a minimum — if that was how the Oilers were going to play it.

They came up with a big moment, as they beat the Oilers’ second line / Kulak – Bouchard pair with a skilled three-way passing play and a nice move by Mitch Marner to dance around Hyman and find a hole in Skinner.


6.   The absence of OEL was most explicitly felt when Simon Benoit took a shift with Morgan Rielly six minutes into the third period. The fourth-line shift for Toronto started with Chris Tanev extending his shift to handle the defensive-zone faceoff with Rielly, but once the puck was out of the zone, Tanev changed for Benoit.

Benoit subsequently defended a rush situation against Hyman poorly, leading to a 4-2 goal that sparked the Oiler onslaught. Hyman was on his off-wing with minimal speed generated; the one thing Benoit couldn’t do there was let him cut inside on his forehand and get a shot off from the hash mark.

The reality is that on the merits of his overall play, Benoit might not be in the lineup right now if Myers was left-handed (not that Myers has been anything approaching perfect). Benoit is hovering just below even on goal share (22-21), but the underlying metrics are really underwhelming, and the expected goals against adjusted on a per-60 basis are by far the highest of any regular defenseman on the team (2.92 xGA/60). The eye test has mostly agreed with those numbers on too many nights this season.

With OEL’s expected absence, Myers will likely step in next to Rielly, and Benoit-Timmins will continue on for now.


7.   There was some traffic to fight through, but the 4-3 Oilers goal by Corey Perry was a case of Woll making his one misstep of the evening, for which we can give the guy a pass on a night when he faced 48 shots on goal.

We can forgive one lapse in puck tracking from a goalie who faced 90 shot attempts over a 60-minute hockey game — easily the most the Leafs have conceded in a single game this season (Stuart Skinner saw 44 shot attempts over all situations at the other end).

Woll was so good in this game overall, and his final save will be relived in many plays/saves-of-the-year highlight-reel packages in the months to come.


8.   John Klingberg owed Toronto one for $4.15 million burned last season; the Leafs, with MLSE’s resources, will take Klingberg’s offside on the potential 4-4 tying goal and call it even. It bailed the Leafs out after giving up two cross-seam passes to Draisaitl in a 10-second span at 6-on-5.

It was disappointing to see the Leafs, on the very next shift, instantly give up a near breakaway to McDavid after surviving the overturned goal scare. Jake McCabe played nearly 12 minutes of the final 23 in this game, but he still found the legs to negate a McDavid breakaway with two minutes left, lunging forward to throw a hit and knock McDavid off the puck at the last second.

I am not sure what Knies was thinking with the puck at the other end, leading to that McDavid break; especially knowing time and place, it should’ve been cycled deep instead of trying to make an awkward pass high in the offensive zone for a turnover.

That was a really athletic and brave maneuver by McCabe in desperate circumstances. He finished with over 30 minutes TOI with the Leafs down to five defensemen, and while there were a few marathon own-zone shifts in there, he just laid it all on the line right to the end for the team — 30:22, five blocks, three hits, and a plus-one.


9.   The Leafs continued to try to find ways to forfeit the lead late in the game. Max Pacioretty looked tired on the shift where he missed the empty netter that would’ve sealed the win; he was late getting back to the defensive zone as the trailing Evan Bouchard collected the puck and ripped it off the bar. That was one of the shifts where it seemed like the faster and fresher legs of McMann would’ve been a better choice for a shift on the Tavares-Nylander line.

Finally, after surviving a few scares coming off of the Oilers timeout and offensive-zone draw with 30 seconds left, Bouchard’s wide shot should’ve ended the game with less than 10 seconds left, but Marner — who did at least hustle hard to the puck on the wall — got rinsed along the boards by McDavid, leading to one last mad scramble and the memorable Woll save.

Highly entertaining drama, and not for the faint of heart from the Leafs’ perspective.


10.  One last time:


Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts


Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts


Game Highlights w/ Joe Bowen & Jim Ralph