FIRED UP IN FINAL PERIOD
Even the goaltenders left their nets to join the fighting during a wild third period in the Leafs’ 6-3 win over the Canucks.
The Vancouver Canucks have been trying to turn back the clock for a while now, building around the 36-yearold Sedin twins — once great, now less so — to puzzling effect.
As backward-looking bits of retro-inspired insanity go, Saturday night’s Toronto-Vancouver dust-up at the Air Canada Centre made even less sense than Vancouver’s alleged franchise-building plan. But at least it was fun.
In a bit of hot-blooded irrationality set off by Nazem Kadri’s blindside charging major on Daniel Sedin, the 6-3 Toronto win drew inspiration from the good-old hockey game’s bloodier days. It had a vicious spear, delivered by Vancouver’s Alex Burrows to the midsec- tion of Toronto’s Morgan Rielly, that turned Rielly into one of a handful of non-fighters who saw the need to fight. It had 161 minutes in combined penalties.
And it even had a line brawl — or, at least, something resembling one, complete with Leafs goaltender Frederik Andersen skating rink-length to partake in the proceedings, this after Vancouver counterpart Ryan Miller left his crease to defend five-foot-10 teammate Troy Stecher from six-foot-three Leafs specimen Matt Martin.
For all the sizzle, there wasn’t much meat on the violence seeker’s bone.
As Andersen said of his brief foray into the fray with Miller: “I wouldn’t really say it was a fight.”
And that went for pretty much all of them. Rielly’s “fight” with Burrows was more of a wrestling-mat roll-around. Ditto Leo Komarov’s dance with Derek Dorsett. “As you saw, it’s probably not my thing,” Komarov said with a smile. “But it was fun.”
It was certainly all post-game laughs for the winners. For the Maple Leafs, it was a night of enjoyable firsts — and not just first NHL “fights.” The two points in the standings gave Toronto 13 points in 12 games — the first time this season they’ve been above point-a-game pace. Mitch Marner’s goal, his third in two games, gave him his first NHL goalscoring streak.
Auston Matthews’s assist of Jake Gardiner’s third-period marker was the reigning No. 1 overall pick’s first point in six games.
Leafs coach Mike Babcock, for his part, seemed to get a kick out of the shenanigans.
“I said to (Martin) before he got on the ice: ‘Marty, just make sure there’s no trouble. Just finish the game off,’ ” Babcock said. “Boys will be boys.”
On this night, the young Leafs who spent the opening handful of games blowing third-period lead after third-period lead were not the same young Leafs.
“We made some small mistakes at the beginning (of the season), and you learn from that,” Komarov said.
Up 3-2 heading into the final frame, the home team extended its lead to 5-3 with goals from Marner and Nikita Soshnikov. At that point, and for most of the hockeyplaying parts of the final 20 minutes, they were a picture of game-controlling calm. That is, until the chaos hit.
Let’s be clear: Kadri’s hit on Daniel Sedin was more than questionable and figures to be reviewed by the league office for supplemental discipline. Yes, Sedin had the puck on his stick in prime scoring territory — so prime that he actually beat Andersen on the shot he released. But Kadri blasted through Sedin’s blind right side, knocked off his helmet, left him face first on the ice. And it wasn’t surprising that Jannik Han- sen took an instigator penalty in an immediate attempt at retribution.
“We’ve got good people at the league to look after that, so I won’t think about it,” Babcock said.
On nights like Saturday Leaf fans can at least take heart that their beloved team is taking a logical path. With the Canucks still built around the Sedin twins, they of the duelling contracts worth a combined annual average of $14 million that don’t expire until the end of next season, the visitors were gracelessly riding out the end of an era without much of a framework in place for the future. As for Vancouver’s present, it looks like Saturday’s alleged bouts: mostly punchless. Two nights after the Canucks managed six shots on goal in the first period of a shutout loss in Ottawa, they spent the opening 20 minutes registering precisely seven shots.
And their ending wasn’t much better than their beginning.
“It was looking like they didn’t want to play much,” said Andersen. That was obvious. “Once they got that third goal (and Kadri hit Sedin), you could tell it was going to escalate a little bit,” Rielly said. “I don’t know. It just kind of gets going … One thing happens. Another thing happens. And that’s the outcome.”
The outcome, for the Leafs, was a fourth win in five home games. On a night the in-game hosts at Air Canada Centre promised the audience a “party atmosphere,” Babcock suggested the festivities might continue beyond the arena.
“I think it’s fun for them,” Babcock said of his players. “You’re young guys. You live in a great city. You never get to go out. And now you’ve got a day off (Sunday) … Looks like a dream come true to me.”