Leafs stave off Rangers to win home opener
Two games into the season, the Maple Leafs offence is already in top gear. But despite winning both contests, it has been a wild ride.
After enduring a penaltyfilled start to beat the Jets 7-2 to kick off the season Wednesday, Toronto survived a four-goal New York comeback to defeat the Rangers 8-5 in its home opener Saturday night.
Third-period goals by Tyler Bozak, Leo Komarov and Nazem Kadri helped secure the Toronto win.
The scoring spree marks the first time the Maple Leafs have scored seven or more goals in consecutive games to open a season since 1917-18 when the Toronto Arenas scored nine and 10 goals, respectively.
Fun and dumb was Leafs coach Mike Babcock’s assessment of the up-anddown evening.
It was an adventure in defending for both teams at times, with Toronto pulling ahead 5-1 in the first period and chasing Henrik Lundqvist before the Rangers scored four unanswered goals to quieten the Air Canada Centre crowd of 19,621.
Babcock pointed to the final result, calling it a “big win at home” while acknowledging there is more work to be done.
“The second period, I don’t know what we were doing,” he said. “We got away from our game.
“That’s the way sports should be. When you don’t do things right, you shouldn’t have success and we didn’t. There’s lot of things we can get better at but the way I look at it is we’ve played two (games) now and found a way to survive in both of them and win the games.”
Babcock said while the Leafs lost their way, “we had enough stability and enough talent to stick with it and end up getting a win.”
“So a big win for our team. It’ll feel good tomorrow and we’ll fix the things we’ve got to fix,” he added.
Toronto hosts Chicago on Monday.