The Maple Leafs’ stars woke up offensively, and their depth scoring continued to chip in as they lit up the Nashville Predators for seven (two empty-netters) on Tuesday night.

The Leafs largely carried over their five-on-five ascendancy from the final 40 minutes of the Red Wings game in the first period of play. They’re more often breaking out cleanly in five-man units vs. punting pucks away, and unsurprisingly, they looked like a faster team in the process, gaining the offensive zone with possession or skating onto dumped-in pucks with speed, enabling their forecheck game.

Toronto recorded five of the first six shots, including good looks for John Tavares (jam play from below the goal line), Simon Benoit off a beautiful cross-ice Matias Maccelli feed through a seam, and Auston Matthews off the left flank (fired high/wide).

They broke through with two goals by defensemen, Jake McCabe and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. With Matthew Knies recovering from a shot block, Dakota Joshua took a shift with the top line and got a puck in deep. As F1, Easton Cowan tied up the defender before Joshua swooped in and recovered the puck. Joshua rounded the net and kicked it back to the point, where Jake McCabe got a friendly deflection for his first of the season and first in 34 games (including last season’s playoffs).

OEL added to the lead after making a nice play inside the defensive blue line to break up an entry. Simon Benoit sprung Nylander with a nice breakout pass for a rush up ice, where Nylander stopped up inside the blue line and slipped a pass to OEL joining the rush. With Tavares driving the center lane, OEL ripped a pass to the backdoor, where the Predators’ Ozzy Wiesblatt deflected it into his own net; Maccelli was likely going to direct it in if Wiesblatt hadn’t.

Cayden Primeau was only called on for one save of note in the period— on the lone power play for either team, a pass came across slowly to Steven Stamkos, but Primeau adjusted, stayed square, and shut the door.

The two sides traded clean breaks in the first few minutes of the second period — Marchessault was turned aside by Primeau’s best save of the night, and McMann was rejected by the post — before the Predators tied it up inside four minutes.

The Leafs struggled with some lost battles and a handful of turnovers in their defensive zone early in the second period, and two of them led to the Predators tying the game. Brandon Carlo turned a puck over up the wall, and after the puck switched sides up top, he lost positioning when recovering to the net front and was beaten in the loose puck battle by Michael McCarron, who buried a point shot that deflected off his own body and fell into the crease behind Primeau. Chris Tanev then turned a puck over behind his net for a quick bang-bang goal against on a pass out from behind the goal line. Primeau didn’t have a chance on either one.

Craig Berube called a timeout to settle his troops, and the Leafs stemmed the bleeding before answering four and a half minutes later with their prettiest end-to-end puck movement sequence of the season to date. All five skaters— Rielly, Maccelli, OEL, Nylander, and Tavares — touched the puck in a series of tidy give-and-gos down the ice until Tavares finished it off in front.

With under four minutes left in the period, Bobby McMann restored the two-goal advantage, continuing his dynamite start to the season. The McMann-Domi-Robertson line, which struggled with a few prolonged d-zone shifts earlier in the night, generated a nice offensive-zone shift where they buzzed the net with four shot attempts. The Predators were scrambling to make the long change afterward, and OEL continued his big night with a quick-up to Robertson, who touched it onto McMann for a partial break down the right wing. McMann’s initial shot was blocked by Brady Skjei’s stick, but he followed it up and got a friendly deflection off of Skjei’s stick the second time for McMann’s second of the season.

The third period never really threatened to get away from the Leafs, helped greatly by an insurance 5-2 goal halfway through the period, featuring Easton Cowan’s first NHL point. Cowan intercepted a wayward Predators pass in the neutral zone and sent Auston Matthews away for a pretty back-and-forth 2-on-1 goal with Matthew Knies for Matthews’ first goal past a goaltender this season.

The Predators did score a few garbage-time goals, but they were negated by two Leafs empty netters (by Matthews and Nylander). The third Predator goal was scored by Roman Josi, who clearly should’ve been in the box for a blatant hold on Matthews at the other end shortly beforehand. Matthews burying the empty netter was poetic justice after an egregious missed call.

Post-Game Notes

– It’s been a mixed start to the season for Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who was without a point and was a minus-three through three games, but he turned back the clock to All-Star, top-10-in-Norris-voting OEL in this game with a goal and two assists in 21 minutes of ice time. Combined with Jake McCabe‘s 1-0 goal, the Leafs are now up to three goals, 11 points, and 29 shots on goal from their six defensemen through four games.

If we break it down per “man game” (24 GP so far), it’s .13 goals, .45 points, and 1.2 shots per man game by the defense. Last season, the Leafs finished at .04 goals, .28 points, and 1.0 shots per man game by the D. It’s very early, but it’s a notable improvement in an area of emphasis entering the season (more from O from the D).

– The power play shows as 0-for-8 through four games after going 0-for-2 in the third period, but they’re doing a lot right. They’re gaining the zone cleanly and moving it around crisply in-zone, finding open seams and creating plenty of looks; Matthew Knies had a great backdoor chance, Morgan Rielly missed a wide-open net at the backpost, Nick Robertson rang the iron on a one-timer from the slot, and the Leafs generated eight shot attempts in total from the homeplate area in just two power-play opportunities tonight. More frustrating is that they’re somehow only getting two opportunities a night through four games. They’ve owned the puck for large spells of the past two games, yet were shorthanded two more times than they were on the man advantage. The soft call on Knies after Fedor Svechkov fell over on his own, and the missed call on Roman Josi were headshakers.

– Cayden Primeau should probably find a way to track down at least one of the third and fourth Predator (garbage-time) goals despite the traffic, but by and large, he gave the Leafs enough quality goaltending through 55 minutes to win the game. The Leafs didn’t ask a ton of him, and neither of the first two Nashville goals was on the goalie. His save on a Jonathan Marchessault breakaway early in the second period was his best, and by and large, he was reasonably calm, efficient, and square to pucks when the game was still in the balance.

It was not perfect by any means, but it’s enough to say it’s a crisis averted for now at the backup position, with Joseph Woll‘s status still completely up in the air. Scheduled starts against Buffalo and Columbus provide further tests later in the month; neither is a marquee opponent by any stretch, but both have typically been high-scoring matchups for the Leafs in recent history.

– Outside of his first NHL point, Easton Cowan took two big hits in the third period; one was an illegal interference where he was dangerously thrown into the Leafs’ net by a real person named Ozzy Wiesblatt, and the other was a legal but crunching hit by Filip Forsberg along the wall. Auston Matthews was right next to both perpetrators; he chose to skate away while signaling to the ref for a call in the first instance, then lightly hugged Forsberg (at best) in the second instance; in the latter case, there was also already a penalty pending on Nashville for a hold on Knies, so it was nothing but a green light to respond in the moment. Chris Tanev did grab Wiesblatt, but the response in these moments remains less than impressive to start the year, especially amid all the talk about togetherness and a pack mentality entering the season.

– Identical to his first game, Cowan finished at 14:05 in time on ice, which seems like a good range in terms of not overwhelming but keeping him in a rhythm. He created a little more offensively in Monday’s game, but he still held up well with his skating, decision-making, overall work rate, and puck management in a back-to-back situation. He was a secondary contributor to two goals — the forecheck prior to the 1-0, and the secondary assist on the 5-2. No reason not to keep this trio rolling into Thursday.

– It was good to see Bobby McMann at least cross the 15-minute mark in this one (fifth among forwards at 15:04). This should be the bare minimum when he is playing as he currently is; he’s been a top two-or-three forward on the ice for the Leafs in three of their four games. He’s creating multiple breakaway/partial breakaway/odd-man looks per game with his speed and is brimming with confidence with the puck/around the net. His breakaway was well taken, if not for the post. He finished with a team-high four shots on goal at five-on-five.

– In need of a response, William Nylander‘s battle level without the puck was up significantly from recent games, and unsurprisingly, so were his puck touches and overall offensive impact. After three shots on goal in his first three games, he put five shots on goal tonight, scored an empty-netter, and recorded two nice primary assists at five-on-five.

It was also John Tavares‘ best game of the season. The signs were there early in the game when he drove the net out of the corner, then later beat a defender one-on-one off the rush for another chance. He finished with a goal, two assists, six shot attempts, and a 63% success rate on the faceoff dot.

One defensive gaffe on the Marchessault break aside, Matias Maccelli was working hard away from the puck and dishing it well, including a beautiful setup of Benoit through a seam early in the game. He was hard done by to leave this game without a point, given the multiple goal-scoring plays he was a part of and the unconverted looks he created.

The combined puck possession abilities of this line — Maccelli, Nylander, Tavares — are really high and present some intriguing potential, assuming they’re grinding away from the puck enough defensively and winning enough pucks back on the forecheck (question marks still to be answered).

– The good news about the Leafs’ second-period struggles (outscored 6-3 in the middle frame so far) is that they were elite in this department last season, with a 101-73 advantage with the long change. It’s probably not going to last, assuming they sharpen up their mindset and details with the long change.

“In the second period, for me, you have to be direct with the play and the puck. Line changes and your bench matter, and getting defensemen off. All of those little things matter in the second period. We have to get better at it.”

– Craig Berube

Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Game Highlights: Maple Leafs 7 vs. Predators 4

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