Alex Steeves scored his first NHL goal as the Maple Leafs benefited from balanced five-on-five scoring en route to a 6-3 over Carolina.

Sketchy late-game moments aside, this was an excellent way for the Leafs to start their post-4-Nations stretch drive: a nice “team” win over a top opponent who previously had their number for five straight games.

The Leafs are nearly fully healthy and have the softest schedule in the league the rest of the way (or tied for it). The injured Matthew Tkachuk’s season appears to be in question in Florida, who lead the division by just one point over the Leafs, who currently have two games in hand. Home ice through the first two rounds and a favorable round-one matchup are right there for the taking if the Leafs can reach out and grab it.

Your game in 10:

1.   You wondered how the two teams would look coming off of a two-week break for most of the players and a quick turnaround/emotional come-down after the 4 Nations tournament for seven of the players involved (four for the Canes, three for the Leafs). It was the Leafs who had their legs early.

They rolled out the Tavares line, the Matthews line, the Domi line, and then the Kampf line (in that order), and all four lines came out with jump, got some early puck touches, and established a forecheck and some cycle time. At the end of the first shift for Lorentz – Kampf – Steeves line — which Alex Steeves started off with a solid hit on Brent Burns on the forecheck — Steeves did a good job of scrumming a puck on the end boards in an out-numbered situation as his teammates changed off.

When the Canes finally freed the puck up, two-thirds of John Tavares‘ line was arriving in the offensive zone, and Tavares intercepted a blind pizza toss up the middle by Brent Burns. Steeves was starting to peel for a change after grinding on the puck down low, but he was aware enough to identify what was developing in time to pivot around and rip a one-timer into the net off a Tavares feed just three minutes into his first game post-call-up.

Steeves has scored goals in bunches from that area of the ice as a lefty ripping one-timers in the right circle for the Marlies. He owns an NHL shot, to be sure, and we also saw signs throughout the night of what we’ve seen regularly on the Marlies this season — he’s begun to pair it with a more consistent workmanlike mentality away from the puck and on the forecheck. That combination has made him the most dominant goal-scorer in the AHL this year, and it’ll be critical that he continues to put the work part first if he’s going to stick down the lineup at this level. He won’t be seeing too many of those Tavares passes up here, but if he can grind for his offensive opportunity and capitalize on the odd look, the Dewars and Robertsons have not exactly nailed down spots in the Leafs’ bottom six.

2.    The Leafs padded the early lead less than a minute later. They first needed Anthony Stolarz‘s first good save of the game on a transition play where Morgan Rielly and Oliver Ekman-Larsson ended up on the same side of the rink, and Nylander was scrambling back to harass Jordan Staal as he tried to chip a puck past Stolarz at the back post.

From there, William Nylander made a really nice play late in his shift. He could’ve just chipped the puck in at the line and gotten off, but he weaved and evaded pressure in a 1-on-4 situation before picking out Auston Matthews streaming in off the bench unmarked through the middle. Matthews’ shot created a rebound as Pontus Holmberg crashed the net hard and got a touch on it. It lingered on the goal line until Jordan Staal jammed it off his own goalie and into the net.

Both early goals were examples of the Leafs finishing shifts strongly and setting the table for the next line coming over the boards, each in their own way (Nylander buying time with the puck and ripping a nice pass through the middle; Steeves pinning the puck down low until help arrived).

Holmberg later buried an empty-netter in this game, which means that his four goals this season have been made up of two empty-netters, a puck he basically half-fanned on through the goalie’s legs on a shorthanded rush in New Jersey, and an own goal by the other team. The offense doesn’t come easy or pretty for him, but he works hard enough to overcome the lack of natural goal-scoring talent every now and again.

In spot duty at 2LW, Holmberg can provide the odd shot in the arm, and he made Berube look clever for the pre-game adjustment tonight; it just isn’t going to be a full-time solution, and the difficulty is that the team wound up in a situation where Bobby McMann, the far more impactful player, played just 12:40, a full three minutes less than Holmberg tonight.

The Leafs won’t/shouldn’t feel confident in their forward depth until — with some outside help, and possibly Calle Jarnkrok‘s return — they’re in a position where McMann can play on L2 with an L3 that can function without him behind them, or they can use McMann on L3 with improved support on his line, allowing L3 to play more minutes in more situations.

3.   The Leafs went to the game’s first power play soon after taking the 2-0 lead but weren’t particularly sharp on it. A few half-looks for McMann, Nylander, and Rielly later on in the power play was all that came out of it, but when the fourth line took their second shift of the game afterward, they scored one of the prettiest fourth-line + bottom-pairing goals we’ll see this season.

Starting with Steeves, all five Leafs touched the puck in the goal-scoring movement — a low-to-high play, a D-to-D switch, a nice pass into the middle by Conor Timmins, followed by two nice reverse passes (by Steeves and then Steven Lorentz) leading to an empty-net finish for David Kampf.

Chomping at the bit after getting passed over for some call-up opportunities despite dominating the AHL consistently, Steeves was shot out of a cannon for this game, picking up a goal and an assist on his first two shifts. The bits and pieces we saw of him earlier in the season included a couple of games on a line with Dewar and Kampf, and they were a decent energy line that spent more time in the offensive zone than not. Dewar is nearly ready to return and may be ready to as soon as tomorrow, but Steeves’ performance tonight gave Berube no choice but to keep this Lorentz – Kampf – Steeves trio rolling for a longer sample — or at least if anyone is coming out for Dewar tomorrow, it should be Nick Robertson, not Steeves.

With the goal, Kampf ended an eight-game pointless slump, while Lorentz had just one point in his previous seven.

4.   Around the midway point of the first, Mitch Marner nearly made it 4-0 on a pass out from below the goal line by Matthew Knies, and then Hurricanes started to make their first notable pushback at 3-0 down. You briefly wondered if the Leafs might fall into the same trap they did in Carolina in early January after getting off to a fast start there (it turns out they almost did, but not until much later in the night). Brind’Amour’s Hurricanes were uncharacteristically flat-footed to start the night, but they rarely go away in games.

With the Leafs scrambling for a few minutes straight, Anthony Stolarz made three really nice saves on good looks for Sean Walker, Jesper Kotkaniemi, and Jordan Martinook. In the past two and a half months, Stolarz had played all of 60 minutes of hockey — and it was a relatively light workload in Seattle back on February 6 — but you’d never know it based on how he started this game. He was dialed in and sharp right away.

5.   With the Hurricanes making a credible push, Stolarz’s trio of quality saves and another nice moment from William Nylander put this game just about out of reach (though not entirely) at 4-0 just 15 minutes into the game.

Nylander’s initial pass reception in the neutral zone was a thing of beauty; when Holmberg ripped it to him cross-ice with Shane Gostisbehere stepping up, Nylander chipped it behind him with his first touch (one-handed) and created some space off the rush. While he initially bobbled the puck when he went to shoot from the faceoff dot, Nylander recovered, bought some time, cut around Eric Robinson, and picked out Tavares, who smartly popped out into some soft ice between the checks in front to bury his 22nd of the season.

With his start to the 2024-25 season (21 goals and 45 points in 48 games), Tavares did his best to put himself back in the Team Canada 4 Nations conversation after a down season last year, and I’m by no means dismissing what it would’ve meant to him to be there. That said, to find the silver lining, it came right around the point in the season when he hit the skids last year with a nine-game pointless slump. He wound up finishing with 33 points in his final 50 games in 2024-25, including a two-point, seven-game playoff series versus Boston. Maybe the extended break will serve him well; he’s now begun the stretch drive with a two-point start with a goal (which turned out to be the GWG) and a nice primary assist tonight.

6.   The Leafs got an important kill late in the first/early in the second to keep it at 4-0. After a rough shift from Nick Robertson — a turnover in the defensive zone followed by a failure to get it deep in the neutral zone at the end of his shift (albeit with no help from a linesman in the way) — led to Eric Robinson breaking in on Stolarz, they also got a big early save to keep Carolina from gaining some belief early in the period.

The first half of the second period settled into a sufficiently low-event game for a spell, and the Leafs’ fourth line nearly scored again through Kampf in the slot on a set-up from Steeves, who then nearly found the five-hole on the rebound opportunity. That, plus a Tavares look from the slot, were the Leafs’ two high-danger chances at five-on-five in the period; they also had one jam play in front by Matthew Knies on the power play and a great look shorthanded. They only conceded three high-danger chances at the other end despite Carolina firing 24 shot attempts at the Leafs’ net to Toronto’s nine (the usual high-volume approach from the Hurricanes).

When the Leafs went to the PK late in the period after a soft tripping call on Kampf, Mitch Marner picked off a pass for an unsuccessful shorthanded breakaway that was the best chance for either team in the period, and the Leafs allowed just one shot on goal on the kill. The game felt comfortably in hand through 40 minutes. Clocked puck possession time stood at around 20.5 apiece a few minutes into the third period.

7.   Early in the third period, Andrei Svechnikov got away with a flagrant cross-check to Max Domi‘s head, one that should definitely receive a second look from the league. The lack of response from the refs was abysmal, but the response from Jake McCabe was commendable a little later in the period once he was on the ice with Svechnikov.

It doesn’t always have to be a fight in response — and with the team up 4-0 against a good team, instigating one isn’t worth it — but there has to be something when an opponent takes obvious liberties. McCabe didn’t let Svechnikov off the hook the entire shift, as he was right in his ear and hitting him with cross-checks up and down the ice without ever stepping over the line into the penalty box. We’ve seen McCabe step up for the team in those moments before, including after Garnet Hathaway ran Dennis Hildeby and when Brayden Schenn was running around early in the game in St. Louis.

8.   When the game reached the final 10 with the Leafs still up 4-0, you’re hoping to accomplish 1) the team digging in for a Stolarz shutout and 2) Berube comfortably rolling his lines through to the end to manage the minutes of his top players in a back-to-back situation.

The first didn’t come close to happening, and the second goal was somewhat hampered by needing to lean on Matthews-Marner and McCabe-Tanev more once the game turned sketchy, although Matthews, Marner, and Nylander all still came in a hair under 20 minutes.

The best scoring chance for either team in the first 12 minutes of the third period was a 2-on-1 for Knies and Matthews. Right after that, the Tavares line generated some possession but was caught out for a longer shift, with only Nylander able to change, as OEL got stripped on a retrieval against the Canes’ forecheck.

With Robertson changing on, he identified the Canes’ defenseman, Shane Gostisbehere, activating through the middle of the zone but didn’t follow his check all the way to the net, seemingly assuming he could hand him off down low. You could tell it was late in the shift for everyone else’s legs and brains, as OEL and Rielly were unaware of the threat jumping in and a little slow to return to the front of the net (in Rielly’s case). Gostisbehere was open in the middle of four Leafs defenders for a 4-1 goal that kicked off the near-comeback.

The Leafs took a timeout to see if an offside was worth challenging but opted not to due to the lack of conclusive evidence. It was the right call to take the time and ultimately not to challenge based on the angles we saw, but it also meant Berube didn’t have his timeout when the Canes added another goal (and then another). The Canes did use theirs at 4-3, which gave the Leafs a chance to regroup at the bench.

9.   The initial response to the 4-1 goal was just fine from the Leafs, as a hustle play by McMann nearly set up a Domi goal to ice it. A subsequent battle between McMann and Walker led to off-setting roughing calls, allowing the Canes to set up a 5-on-4 scenario with the goalie pulled.

Matthews just missed an empty net attempt from distance, and Marner made a few clears, but on a rim-around dump-in by Carolina, it appeared to bounce on Marner when he went to seal the wall (normally a strength of his). When the puck came up high past Marner, the Canes quickly switched the zone for a one-time play for Svechnikov that took a wicked deflection off of McCabe’s skate and in.

Just 20 seconds later, it was officially game on. The 4-3 goal came off another wild deflection, but the zone entry right before — leading to the initial shot, rebound, and scramble — needs to be underscored from the Leafs’ perspective. Oliver Ekman-Larsson‘s gap in a 2v4 rush situation with plenty of support around him —the Canes hadn’t even pulled the goalie again yet, so it was still 4-on-4—was beyond soft/passive.

Berube mentioned the “backing off” by his team late in the third after the game, and this will probably be the first clip he shows.

10.  Somehow, it was now 4-3 Leafs with still nearly five minutes left in the game. It meant Matthews, Marner, McCabe, and Tanev saw more ice late in the game than would’ve been drawn up just a few minutes ago.

Fortunately, Matthews iced it for the Leafs with an empty-netter after Tavares won the draw, and Chris Tanev made a calm and composed play to skate it around the net and complete a clean outlet to Matthews out of the zone (following a few turnovers at the Leafs’ blueline the shift before by Nylander and Tavares).

Berube kept Matthews-Marner out there with Tanev and McCabe after the 5-3 goal just to make extra sure the funny business was over with (McCabe finished at over 24 minutes due to playing over five minutes of the final 7:35).

At one point before the 5-3 empty-netter, Berube subbed Domi — of all people — onto the Kampf-Lorentz line in Steeves’ place when Matthews-Marner needed a breather, which only speaks to the fact that this team really needs another forward down the lineup Berube can actually trust in tough situations. Jarnkrok can certainly help here if he can get back up and running.

Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Game Highlights w/ Joe Bowen & Jim Ralph

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