The Toronto Maple Leafs bounced back in a big way in the Sunshine State on Saturday night after a slow and lacklustre start sank them against the Florida Panthers a few nights ago.
Despite a few shaky moments near the end, the Leafs gutted out a big road win against a seasoned Tampa Bay Lightning squad. The Lightning tried to keep it interesting—a Pontus Holmberg icing led to a Jake Guentzel goal to make it 4–2, and some good old game management from the referees gave Tampa a 6-on-4 power play to bring it back within one—but the Leafs prevailed.
I’d be lying if I said there weren’t some sweaty palms and impending doom castigating in those last five minutes, and in a game with so many storylines, I tried my best to keep them down to three for today’s article.
Knies and Matthews, off the floor and on the board
With Bobby McMann’s injury against the Panthers, seeing Matthew Knies and Auston Matthews on the roster sheet for tonight’s game was a welcome sight. While Matthews didn’t score tonight, he was the one who made the nice pass to Tanev on the Knies goal. The two first-line forwards from the start of the season continued to wreak havoc on the forecheck all game alongside new line-mate William Nylander.
It looks like both players were not any worse for wear from their stints on IR, Knies was an absolute pitbull on the puck, winning puck battles and spinning off of defensemen in the corners while being an immovable fortress in the net front. Tonight was also the first time this season we saw the two featured on the power play together alongside the rest of the Core Four.
Power play Coach Marc Savard set Leafs Twitter into a frenzy when it was revealed Toronto would be tinkering with a five-forward unit on the man advantage. Early results from tonight suggest that the Leafs would probably be better suited dropping Tavares down in favour of a defenseman. Marner’s effectiveness was severely muted playing up top in Rielly’s role instead of the half wall where he was so good for Toronto during Matthews’ absence.
Matthews himself will need a few games to round into game shape—the Leafs Captain wasn’t his usual shot-happy self tonight—but every other facet of his game was returned without a hitch.
Tanev and McCabe curtain calls
Despite a very shaky ending to the night, the Leafs played a strong defensive game for most of the night against a Nikita Kucherov-less Lightning. Chris Tanev, brought in for his lunch pail, blue-collar style of defensive play was spectacular again tonight. The 34-year-old logged over 23 minutes of ice time and played much of the game without his usual defence partner.
Tanev forewent the usual block bonanza Leafs fans have become accustomed to tonight, chipping in for two points offensively. In the opening frame, it was Tanev who unloaded a shot off a Matthews feed for Knies to tip five-hole on Vasilevsky to open the scoring. Later on in the game, some nice work by Pontus Holmberg and Mitch Marner gave Tanev time and space where he absolutely wired one blocker side. The grizzly vet deserves his curtain call tonight, especially considering Jake McCabe’s departure from the game in the second period.
A Nate Perbix shot deflected off of Nikita Grebenkin’s stick and hit the other half of Toronto’s shutdown pair in the ear. McCabe didn’t return to the game, but reports in the post-game from Berube indicate that he won’t miss time. McCabe avoiding a serious injury is huge for the Leafs who need to buy more time for the Rielly–OEL pairing to gel and get going offensively.
Finally Robbo
Much has been made in the last few weeks about Nicholas Robertson. In fact, I wrote an article not too far back about his tenure likely being over when the team gets healthy. Despite Robertson working hard, his contact balance and lack of composure on the puck had left Leafs Nation disenfranchised by the 5’9” winger.
Robertson had that jump tonight, and while he wasn’t overly impressive outside of a few nice forechecking plays, it was genuinely nice to see him not falling all over the ice from every bit of contact. His goal tonight on Vasy was electric, a sharp angle, seemingly nothing shot that burned the Lightning netminder.
Sneakily an afterthought in the celebration is that rookie Fraser Minten is up to three points in four games now. If Robertson can continue to piece together more games like this one and Minten and Grebenkin continue to develop throughout the year, I wonder if perhaps the Leafs answer to their depth scoring has been in the organization all along.
On to the Next
After a hectic start to the season, Toronto will enjoy a much less eventful stretch here as they head back home to Scotiabank Arena on Monday to host Connor Bedard and the Chicago Blackhawks. The Leafs currently stand second in the Atlantic with two games in hand on the Florida Panthers who also gave the Hurricanes a 6–0 drumming tonight.
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