STEALING A WIN ON HOME ICE
Andersen’s clutch saves lead Leafs to victory and hand Kings their first loss in regulation time this season.
Drew Doughty will probably not be a Toronto Maple Leaf during the tail end of his considerable prime, which may be a shame. Doughty jumbled up some words in a summer radio interview and said all Southern Ontario boys secretly want to play for the Leafs, and this got people excited because he is a free agent in 2019 and he is the sort of prime-time No. 1 defenceman a contending Leafs team could use.
I mean, ask Drew Doughty.
“To be honest, I never ever watch them play, but I see the highlights and whatnot, and you see that they’re in games where it’s 6-4 or 6-3, so they’re giving up over three goals a game, it seems like to me,” said the 27-year-old Doughty before his Los Angeles Kings lost 3-2 to the Leafs Monday night. “I don’t know if that’s the truth.”
Well, before Frederik Andersen made 36 saves and the Leafs held off a comeback, he was right. Doughty’s sense of the Leafs might have been as hazy as L.A. on a summer day, but they were at 3.50 goals against before Monday night. The Kings came in as the old champs resur- rected, having allowed the fewest goals in the NHL while scoring lots. The Leafs came in as the prodigies, leading the league in goals, but trying to find a 200foot game.
They found something like it, in the end, after all the weird stuff. There was Toronto’s first goal, which came from Roman Polak — raised from the brokenlegged dead, in his first game back — and Matt Martin, who later wiped out his best chance at a Gordie Howe hat trick by sliding into Kings goalie Jonathan Quick.
There was the farce of Quick getting cuffed in the head and skating to and from the bench, never undergoing a concussion protocol, towards the end of the first period. He missed one shift.
There were video reviews and a Mitch Marner rodeo goal that was disallowed and some good goaltending for the Leafs, for once. And when it was all sorted, after everything, the Leafs had a 3-2 victory, and it was earned.
It was L.A.’s first loss in regulation in eight games.
“I think we were good at keeping them to the outside,” Andersen said. “I thought we got better and better as the game went on.”
“As the game went on, we got better,” Leafs coach Mike Babcock said.
“It feels good to beat a good team,” defenceman Morgan Rielly added. The Kings qualify. After coach Darryl Sutter’s honest but glum steamrolling system finally wore out, new coach John Stevens is giving the Kings a little more room to run, and they love it.
Centre Anze Kopitar said the winning was the most fun part, but more offensive freedom got the juices flowing. Doughty said “this is the most fun I’ve had playing hockey since we won the Stanley Cup three, four years ago. We’re just having the time of our lives right now, but that all stops when we start losing.”
They are big and fast and structurally rigorous, and they attack the other way with speed, and the Leafs were taken aback early. But they figured it out.
Even Marner was loose and happylooking for the first time in a while. As he said, “I just calmed down. I realized I was just throwing away the puck, and . . . I need to be more confident with the puck.”
“No one needs Mitch to be a star more than me,” Babcock said. “But also, you’ve got to earn your right to be a star. You’ve got to be what you’re capable of. He knows we’re all pulling for him too, and he wants to be great.”
While the Kings cut Toronto’s lead to 3-2 with just under eight minutes left, they didn’t crumple, and Andersen held fast. He needed that, too. As much as anything, this was what these Leafs look like with goaltending.
Andersen came in with an .892 save percentage.
When he’s good, this is a different team. When Marner plays with electricity, this is a different team. Hell, when Martin isn’t a liability, this is a different team. And more than anything, when they get just enough defensive discipline, enough cohesion, and enough goaltending, this is a different team.
The two years the Kings won the Cup, they finished 29th and 26th in scoring. The Leafs were fifth last year and are first this season, by a lot. The Leafs won’t ever be L.A., old or new, but with some tightening and goaltending, they could be a Pittsburgh. Again, the Penguins allowed five more goals than Toronto last season, but led the league in scoring.
However Toronto tries to do it, they probably won’t do it with Doughty.
The team has searched for a No. 1 defenceman, but Doughty laid it all out: The Kings were his childhood team once they got Wayne Gretzky, he loves L.A., he loves his teammates, the staff, the organization. He said he wants to play in L.A. his whole career.
“I think you just get to a comfort level and you’re just used to being in that city and everything about it,” said Doughty, on why hockey players tend not to leave. “That’s why we don’t want to leave. And we want to show that loyalty.”
Of course, he also added, “but you never know what could happen.”
He was asked if he was surprised former Shark Patrick Marleau, his old rival, left San Jose, and he said, “Maybe he saw a bright future in this team, kind of like everyone else around the league is seeing. And he wants to win a Cup. That’s probably why he left.”
Yeah. Drew Doughty probably won’t ever play for Toronto. In that way, he’d be the same as Gretzky, as Stamkos, as all the other Ontario boys who never came home to the Leafs.
The difference this time is you can imagine a world where they don’t need him to.