Just like that, the previously hapless Maple Leafs emerged from a tough five-game road trip with a 4-1-0 record while outscoring the opposition 16-4 in three straight wins, two of which came in Florida and Carolina.
The last three wins have been really tough games to assess from an analytical point of view, given that the Leafs have built multi-goal leads early in all of them. The five-on-five high-danger chances are 55% in Toronto’s favour despite the shot attempts being just 37% in their favour, and they’ve out-scored the opposition 8-1 from the high-danger areas. With an anaemic power play contributing nothing, they’ve scored on a ridiculous 22% of their five-on-five shots (13 goals on 59 shots).
To the eye, it’s looked more like the formula that led to division-title-winning regular-season success last season. They’ve felt more in control of these games; defending a little bit better, breaking out a bit better, forechecking a bit better, and holding onto leads a lot better. But when you’re scoring on the first shot of the game over and over, the sticks are red hot at one end, and the goaltending is so sharp at the other, it can be difficult to parse out perception vs. reality regarding the process behind a team’s results.
Sitting just there before Matthew Knies’ brilliant solo effort five minutes into the second to make it a 3-1 Leafs lead, you couldn’t honestly feel great about the Leafs’ play. They led 2-1 thanks to a wild bounce off the end boards from a routine dump-in (leading to a Scott Laughton goal), but they had a rough finish to the first period, bookending the Morgan Rielly penalty. The first five minutes of the second period before Knies’ goal were decidedly one-sided in Carolina’s favour.
Overall, while we all know about the Hurricanes’ high-volume/at times empty-calorie approach, the Leafs were getting more than doubled up in both shots and zone time, and Joseph Woll made a handful of subtly very good saves — among them, a couple of toe saves on in-tight shots and deflections, and a really good out-stretched blocker/stick save to get a piece of a dangerous one-timer back across the grain. One bounce the other way, or one less save, and the game easily flips, and we’re maybe sitting here ruing the Leafs’ lack of territorial control over games again.
That said, the best part of this game for me was the Leafs’ play after the Knies goal, leading up to Auston Matthews’ 4-1 tally. They built off the 3-1 goal and went for the jugular as opposed to retreating into a shell, generating a string of offensive-zone shifts. Notably, one of those shifts came with Scott Laughton (who almost scored in tight) in the place of the struggling Easton Cowan on the Tavares-Nylander line.
You could visibly see this team rediscovering its self-belief through the end of this road trip (dare we use the word “swagger” this soon? Probably shouldn’t). That segment of the game looked like a team that was really starting to feel itself and “cruise” out there, so to speak, culminating in a beautiful Knies-to-Domi-to-Matthews goal off the rush to put the game firmly in hand at 4-1.
The Leafs are too damn talented to be as bad as they looked, and they should make no apologies about receiving good goaltending (especially after their start to the season in net). Speaking of…
Post-Game Notes
– We buried the lede with the Joseph Woll situation, as Woll left the game after 40 minutes, having played a truly fabulous seven or eight games since his return (he played 40 minutes in Carolina and 33 minutes in Montreal, so it’s not a full eight starts). The hope is that they took a look at the 4-1 score, the big games vs. MTL and TB upcoming, and said, “Let’s use an abundance of caution” on something minor. It’s not like Woll left in the middle of play after a clear incident; he departed between periods after a chat with the training staff. However, the player’s injury history and the Leafs’ injury history give plenty of reasons to be much more pessimistic than that.
It’s not really 20-20 hindsight to debate whether they should’ve leaned on Woll this hard during the Anthony Stolarz absence after he missed camp and started the year late. There was plenty of chatter in advance (at least in the circles I frequent) as to whether Dennis Hildeby should be starting this game tonight. I am not sure where I fall on it.
With the back-to-back last weekend, Woll had Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to rest before playing Tuesday-Thursday. He’s played less than eight games total as of early December, and they ramped him up very deliberately when he returned from his personal leave (there was no rush there). At a certain point, I’m not sure it’s been an unfair ask for him to stay sharp and healthy with this kind of workload.
On the flip side, it is true that Hildeby, in tough circumstances this season, has given the Leafs no reason not to mix in more starts for him while keeping Woll really fresh, as Hildeby showed again with his nine saves in the third period of this game. Bigger picture, why the Leafs are constantly so injured in general remains a perplexing open question.
– I somewhat tongue-in-cheek mentioned the word “swagger” in the preamble, but after a mighty impressive game from Matthew Knies, you could hear something that sounded much like swagger in the post-game interview:
“We’ve had a tendency to be flat at home, but I think we’re going to come out on Saturday and give some payback to those guys in Montreal.”
Love it. Hope they deliver.
– There were a few strange moments in this game where Easton Cowan just fell down in open ice and turned pucks over, leading to danger, but the more relevant takeaway for me: In the last two games, against two teams that bring the heat with heavy, aggressive forechecks, we’ve seen Cowan noticeably struggle along the walls.
It’s clear Cowan doesn’t have his full man strength yet in terms of his hardness on pucks, but what he does have is NHL smarts, NHL skill, and an NHL work ethic. Smart, skilled young players can learn tricks to survive as they gain experience, but the strength on pucks will take time and NHL summers. As the grind really sets in over the next 50 or so games, and as we think toward a playoff chase/potential playoff hockey, we’ll see if Cowan can produce enough to overlook games like these last two, and if he shows some signs of progress in those areas as we go along. For now, the development path makes a good deal of sense, as he’s playing significant minutes alongside high-quality linemates and chipping in offensively while he learns the ropes.
– I mentioned the Leafs surviving a Carolina push late in the first period, and a big part of it was their PK, which is really rolling right now and helping them stave off potential momentum swings/turn them in their favour. Woll has been a big part of it, but Laughton, Lorentz, Roy, Matthews, and Knies are rolling nicely right now as the forward killers, and Troy Stecher deserves a shout-out for stepping in with Brandon Carlo (a big piece of their kill) out long term.
As part of another monster night in TOI (24:23!), Stecher played 3:41 of the six minutes on the kill and made a nice play on that late first-period PK I just mentioned; he took away the bumper option, and when the puck was shifted low, he recovered to the net to lift a stick and prevent a potential bang-bang goal that would’ve tied the game/erased a 2-0 Leafs lead before the first intermission.
– The domino effect of the load Stecher is — capably, but probably not sustainably — carrying is significant right now. The Leafs were able to keep Philippe Myers in the 11-minute range in this game, as his pairing with Benoit was out-attempted 19-1 (not a typo) in just 9:48 of five-on-five time. Remains a valid question if — handedness be damned — they’d be better off giving Dakota Mermis a try on the right of Benoit.
– I don’t want to spend too much time on spilt milk, but I can’t help myself, as the Leafs sit here with four wins in their last five but still technically in 14th place in the East by total points. Watching Knies-Matthews-Domi show clear chemistry and produce offensively makes you reflect on the lineup decisions in the early parts of the season with a lot of “What in the hell was that?”
It’s clear that Domi on Matthews’ RW was the play from the beginning, given the current pieces at the Leafs’ disposal. It’s not that they’ve been outright dominating games per se, or that Domi has been good overall this season, but there is a clear connection, and it allows the rest of the lineup to naturally fall into place (with duos of Tavares-Nylander, Joshua-Roy, Lorentz-Laughton in behind). I understand that Laughton wasn’t available for the first month and change, but there were easy solutions to pop someone else in 4C and let the rest of it gel out of the gates, as was the original plan in the summer. Craig Berube found his way back to it, but he really got in his own way there, and it probably cost the Leafs some points.
– Nic Roy is up to five points in his last four games while playing 16+ a night and winning 62% of his draws. The Laughton and Roy lines took 14 defensive-zone draws between them in this game, and Matthews took just three at five-on-five. Don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but it’s looking more like how this forward group was designed to look post-Marner during the last two weeks: four lines contributing, with a bottom six that can both chip in more offense and help free up the big duos up front.
– Split-the-units time on the power play? Probably split-the-units time on the power play.
Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts
Game Highlights: Maple Leafs 5 vs. Hurricanes 1