Young Maple Leafs carry some swagger
Two-game winning streak a major confidence-boost for Toronto club
Never mind that it’s just two games. Or that the Leafs have given up a combined 89 shots in their first “winning” streak of the season.
For a young team trying to distance itself from the losing mindset of the not-so-distant past, the two wins clearly count as a moral victory as well.
“I think it’s important in the mindset just in terms of the belief,” Leafs rookie forward Connor Brown said following Friday’s noon-hour practice at the team’s Etobicoke practice facility. “I think we have a good enough team in here to win hockey games and be competitive and when we win a couple in a row and you get that belief and you feel good about yourself.”
A pair of one-goal wins over Edmonton and Buffalo — the latter the team’s first on the road — weren’t always pretty. The defensive issues that have given coach Mike Babcock fits all season were evident, especially in Buffalo on Thursday when the Sabres had a handful of great scoring opportunities.
But with goaltender Frederik Andersen finding his game at the right time, the team now has its first road victory, its first string of wins and some renewed confidence as it gets set to face one of the coldest teams in the league.
“You lose a couple on the road and those things can kind of start to escalate,” first-year Leaf Matt Martin said. “Not just for young guys, for everybody. I’ve been in situa- tions where you lose two, three, four and it really starts to weigh on you and you’re almost finding ways to lose instead of finding ways to win.”
On paper, anyway, the Leafs have a great opportunity today to get their first three-game winning streak of this young season.
The Leafs are certainly buoyed by the play of Andersen, who is 3-1 in his past four starts with a 1.76 goals-against average and .954 save percentage. In the struggle of his first five games, Andersen had a mediocre .851 save percentage.
Losing games and having poor goaltending can be lethal to a team’s morale but Andersen had the opposite effect, both on Thursday, when he made several big saves from close range and on Tuesday, when Connor McDavid and the Oilers were mostly kept at bay.
“To me it was mental,” coach Mike Babcock said of Andersen’s struggles. “Obviously we’re seeing the kind of goalie he is. For whatever reason, he got off kilter and put too much pressure on himself and then he wasn’t able to control who he is. He got himself under control.”