FLYING START!
Maple Leafs crush Jets in season opener.
Look, it’s just one game. Yes, the Leafs went up 6-0 before the poor Winnipeg Jets got on the board. Yes, Winnipeg came into the NHL season opener with so much hope: they had just re-signed 21-year-old star forward Nikolaj Ehlers to a seven-year, $42-million (U.S.) contract on Wednesday morning, and they talked about how they were on the rise. There were banners outside that said that and everything.
And then the Leafs hung a touchdown on them, to start. Maybe the real trick to not blowing leads is to pile those leads a mile high. It was a weird, disjointed, 7-2 evisceration.
“The first period was not great,” Leafs defenceman Ron Hainsey said. “We were kind of surviving with a little bit of luck and our goaltender. We got better, though.”
True, and true. They took four firstperiod penalties, and eight on the night. One of them was for Leo Komarov’s errant visor, and he joked, there goes his shot at the Lady Byng. Leafs goaltender Frederik Andersen had to be spectacular. And then . . . uh . . .
“After the first period we really got to where we wanted to be,” forward Mitch Marner said.
Yes, you could say that. At times, they were cycling like Harlem Globetrotters. In the first period, the tide was turned by Nazem Kadri’s power-play goal, then James van Riemsdyk’s off-the-faceoff tally. Oh, and Auston Matthews.
“Opportunistic, I think,” Andersen said. “We have a lot of skill. No one’s doubting that.”
Matthews opened with four goals in his rookie year, and this time all he did was push the game, pull it, move it where he wanted. Late in the first, he circled out of the corner, dragging Dustin Byfuglien in his wake, and the referee had raised his arm for a penalty, and it was like the Jets just watched Matthews so intently that they forgot about William Nylander, all alone. 3-0.
The fourth goal was a circus goal: Connor Carrick had zipped a 70-foot pass to Marner at the Jets blue line, and he slipped it to a flying Matthews.
As two Jets converged on Matthews — again, he pulls the game towards him — he flipped the puck to an open Patrick Marleau for a Zorro-style goal. Marleau scored the fifth one, too. Marner got the sixth, on a power play. After Winnipeg got a power-play goal, Matthews tipped in Toronto’s seventh.
The Leafs won’t get to face Steve Mason every night. (It’s sure something that the Jets could conceivably have a goaltender controversy on day two.) It’s one game. One 7-2, blow-their-doors-off game. Lord, this is a dangerous team.
“These guys can certainly score, our group of forwards,” Hainsey said. Asked if it was similar to Pittsburgh, where he played last year, Hainsey said, “a lot of good players who can score, yep. It’s very similar, where you have three lines on both teams where there’s no break for the other team’s players, as far as scoring chances, and speed, and creativity. So very similar in that regard.”
Asked what it was like to face a team like that, he said, “it’s terrible. It’s awful.”
These are the innocent days, before the big contract negotiations, before envy takes root, before things get too complicated. Right now, the Leafs’ stars are cheap, and if you want a prediction, Matthews will chase Connor McDavid all season, and in the contract realm. That he and McDavid were on a line with Winnipeg’s Mark Scheifele at last year’s World Cup of Hockey remains an absurd, glimmering piece of hockey history.
“Oh yeah, you could tell he was a special player,” Scheifele said of Matthews. “And I think the biggest thing that I took away from it was how hard he worked on his game. We’d be out shooting pucks for hours on end, and he was always out there, he was always working on things. That’s the biggest testament to him . . . how hard he wants to be the best. That’s what makes him the player that he is. I like to stay out there for hours on end, and he was always there with me. A pretty special thing to do with his clout and his skill level.
“It’s the same for Connor, it’s the same for (Sidney) Crosby . . . and that’s what makes them the players that they are. That’s what all the best do. That’s what LeBron James does in his sport, that’s what Tom Brady does in his sport, that’s how you become the best in the world. And obviously Auston is someone who wants to be the best.
“I’ve never had so much fun playing hockey in my life. It was some fun hockey to play, to be a part of. It was awesome. It was the battle level of a playoff game, but the skill level of an all-star game.”
The Leafs didn’t quite look like Team North America, but boy, they were fun. Still, everyone needs to be cool, to stay cool. They won’t score seven every night. It’s not going to be this easy, and there’s work left to do.
As Matthews said, “Can’t get too far ahead of yourself, but can’t live in the past, either.” One game, one team with bad goaltending. One game.
Which just means it could be a hell of a thing to watch this team play the other 81, and more.