Leafs’ Dane was great in win
They serenaded him in Boston but that was in mocking fashion, with a chowder flattening of the Rs, and chasing him down the tunnel.
This, though, this was the real thing, a tribute from the grateful and the awed: FRED-DIE! AND-ER-SON! FRED-DIE! AND-ER-SON!
And that was even before he made a breathtaking save with some two minutes left in regulation, twisting and flinging out the paddle on a shot from David Pastrnak just about in his wheelhouse.
That one had fans in the stands and teammates on the bench in jaw-dropping gape for the Toronto goalie, the key difference-maker on a night when plenty of Leafs stepped up to avert three-in-the-hole disaster.
Leading the Freddie rah-rah, in the wake of Toronto’s 4-2 triumph over the Bruins on Monday night, was a much happier, definitely more media-agreeable Auston Matthews, he of the game-winner and arm-windmilling whoopwhoop celebration.
“That was one of the best saves I think I’ve ever seen. That was unbelievable. That was awesome.”
But that was hardly all on an evening when The Ginger Man turned aside 40 of 42 shots – not counting the pair that pinged of posts bang-bang in a matter of power-play seconds – keeping his team firmly in the game, on the upside of what had been a narrow onegoal edge score, through the final 20 minutes of freewheeling hockey, up and down the ice, Andersen standing up, flopping sideways, sprawling across, whatever it took to maintain that slim lead until Patrick Marleau provided an insurance lamp-lighter with less than four minutes remaining in regulation.
“Ah, a lot of bodies in front of the net, picked up the pass a little late, tried to get something on it and lucky I was able to get a piece of it, stop it from going in the net. Good feeling.”
That was Andersen, trying very hard not to sound immodest later, in the dressing room.
But, gosh, it was a dilly, that save. Kind of thing a grown-up goalie might only try in practice, goofing around.
“I try, yah,” he laughed. “That’s why you work on your bunting skills.” Bunting? Anyway, same paddle Andersen lifted in salute to the crowd when he came out for his First Star of the Game spin. Then handed the stick over the glass to a kid.
He’s a laconic guy, Andersen, quiet-spoken, but on some of the those saves last night, you could just about see the whites of his own eyes popping. It was as if he was in a metaphysical zone on all the bitchin’ Boston shots – those close-ins, the tips and deflections, the scramblies. Yet the only two shots that beat him were very much on the yips-side: A clean blast from the point by Adam McQuaid – saw it at the last minute, couldn’t stop it, “should have got it’’ and a truly freaky goal wherein Zdeno Chara shot the puck along the goal line to the right of Andersen and, well, essentially caroming it in off the back of his head.
Perhaps, at a later date, the big amiable Dane will laugh about it.
In the moment, however, he was more preoccupied spreading the good cheer about his ’mates, as beholden to them, he said, as they were to him.
“I thought we played with a lot of energy, a little bit harder around both nets. Yah, I think the puck retrievals, offensive zone, we were able to sustain some pressure. And then tracking, making sure they didn’t get up the ice and have too much time.”
Twice the Leafs took a onegoal lead and twice the Bruins evened up before Matthews put Toronto on top for good.
So, his teammates had Andersen’s back that way.
“(A) thing we did really well was responding when they scored. On both their goals we scored pretty quick right away and that’s huge.”
Crucially, Andersen made the big saves when they mat- tered most.
“We got away with the win and that’s what matters.”
Frankly, it was the Maple Leafs of very recent vintage, regular-season vintage, emerging from their weird playoff funk, restored to the land of the living, the quick and the un-dead.
Andersen and Matthews, Mitch Marner and Marleau, Morgan Rielly and even the much-maligned (legitimately so), Tomas Plekanec. Et al. The et al is the crux of the thing because only collectively will this team climb out of the Big Dig hole reamed out for them in Boston over Games 1 and 2. But, oh my, those individual flashes of virtuoso sure are pretty.
A heart-thumping thing, this game was, Leafs still often evincing some of the slapyour-head forehead bungles that caused them such grief in Beantown.
Brain-crampy in the defensive zone over stretches, making life miserable for Andersen in patches. Mostly, however, he flummoxed the best the Bruins had to throw at him.
Off the top, it could not have been not have been blue-andwhite-printed any better. To spec: First goal, first powerplay goal, first series lead, first lead-in-his-pencil Andersen save on a burst to the net by Brad Marchand, cutting straight across the paint, (off a first Leaf turnover), first KA- BOOM open-ice hit to flatten a Bruin with his head down – again, Marchand – and then ended up almost with his head between his butt-cheeks, sent sprawling over the hip of Zach Hyman. Doubtless Marchand took down the licence plate of the Hummer that ran him over, for future reference.
Yet mostly Boston’s hummer of a top line was held in check. So Plekanec as a cowl slipped over Patrice Bergeron proved ingenious rather than dumbass on coach Mike Babcock’s part. Those 72 career games against the Bruins, all those Montreal-Boston battles, have clearly rendered him savvy in this narrow area of expertise.
Maybe now the Leafs do have a playoff future for themselves, if by the hair of their chinnychin playoffs beards, jamming their foot in the doorway to keep it from slamming shut on what would have likely been an insurmountable 3-0 game deficit.
Heck, there was Matthews, the marquee talent, laying a thwacking hit on Charlie McAvoy in the opening minutes, somewhere between his regrettable dressing room comment after Game 2 – “s—t happens” – and Monday night clearly deciding, no, “s—t” doesn’t just happen. And this possible sweep “s—t”, he just wasn’t going to let happen.
Neither, on this night, would Freddie.
Of the chanting, he said: “Oh, I heard them.”