Andersen stellar between the pipes as Leafs down Knights
TORONTO — Frederik Andersen made 36 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Vegas Golden Knights 3-1 on Tuesday night.
Connor Brown, Mitch Marner and Nazem Kadri, into an empty net, scored for Toronto (10-5-0). Brown also had an assist.
Cody Eakin replied for Vegas (6-8-1), which got 18 stops from Marc-Andre Fleury.
The Knights were by far the better team through two periods and had a couple of opportunities to tie the score early in the third down 2-1 only to watch Andersen shut the door.
Patrick Marleau nearly made it 3-1 for Toronto moments later off a pass from Kasperi Kapanen on a 2-on-1 rush, but the veteran flubbed his shot wide.
The Knights, who got winger Max Pacioretty back from an upper-body injury but are still without centre Paul Stastny, lost another forward when Erik Haula went down with an apparent right leg injury five minutes into the third.
Haula, who collided with Marleau along the boards, stayed down for a few minutes as he was attended to by the medical staffs of both teams before being stretchered off.
Vegas kept its foot on the gas with Fleury on the bench for an extra attacker, but couldn’t get much in the way of pressure before Kadri scored his fourth into an empty net with 34.1 seconds left.
Coming off Saturday’s dominant 5-0 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins that saw Andersen stop 31 shots to snap a two-game slide, the Leafs went up 2-0 just nine seconds into the second period.
John Tavares stole the puck from William Karlsson at the Knights blue line before feeding Marner, who beat Fleury high over the blocker for his fifth goal of the campaign.
Vegas dominated the period from there.
After both Brad Hunt and Shea Theodore found iron on blasts from the point, the latter fired a shot that Eakin tipped past Andersen for his fourth at 11:22 just as the Leafs goalie was reaching with his glove to make the save.
The Leafs entered play just 3-5-0 at home, including losses in four of their last five in Toronto, and had gone five straight at Scotiabank Arena without scoring in the first two periods, but Brown put an end to that ugly streak at 5:30 of the first.