Not pretty, but Leafs bounce back to edge Sens
Kerfoot’s third period marker holds up
In grudging praise of the Ottawa Senators, a few Toronto Maple Leafs have muttered they’re a team that “just won’t go away.”
That’s been true of all four games in the Battle of Ontario and two of the three this week, with one to go before the Senators finally head to the airport.
After a stunning five-goal comeback on Monday, lastplace Ottawa once more gave the Leafs little room to work with before the home team ground out a 2-1 win Wednesday at Scotiabank Arena.
A third failed power play had just elapsed in the third period before Alex Kerfoot knocked in the winner with
Jake Muzzin getting his 200th NHL assist on the play and Joe Thornton clearing the front of the net.
Auston Matthews scored to extend his points streak in the second period, but there was too much reliance on Frederik Andersen’s goaltending and secondary scoring continues to suffer.
The four games have now been split with a goaltending change to Michael Hutchinson possible for the Leafs after Andersen’s 10 straight starts.
The clubs traded middle period goals, Toronto striking after two Thornton goals were waved off, one when he shovelled the covered puck and the pad of Sens goalie Matt Murray over the line.
The second was an obvious high stick tip. But on the same shift as the latter, Muzzin and Justin Holl set up Matthews in his wheelhouse for a one-timer.
That moved Matthews to 17 goals in 19 games vs. Ottawa and increased his season’s points streak to 11 games since he missed one with an injury, during which he has 12 goals.
But after Matthews was part of a paltry one-shot power play, Ottawa was able to once again get a late second-period goal. Right after killing a minor to Travis Dermott, who’d gone rogue on a solo rush and took a holding call trying to recover, the Leafs got caught pressing too deep. Brady Tkachuk on a 2-on-1 scored on the Sens’ 22nd shot against Andersen.
As Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe predicted, play at puck drop didn’t at all resemble the scramble of late Monday. Only a few shots made it through after the initial 11 minutes, however Andersen wound up making 10 saves by the end.
John Tavares, whose 5-on-5 numbers have come under scrutiny as he and linemate William Nylander both struggle, at least has been looking faster this season and showed that on an early partial breakaway, a high backhand that Murray snagged.
“You can tell he’s fighting it a bit right now,” Keefe said of Tavares before the game. “But I focus on a lot of the positive things that have come out of his game so far. The first 10 games he was skating as well as I’ve seen in my time here.
“We’ve asked all our players to be more responsible and aware defensively and to me, he’s been terrific in that regard. His numbers are down, but his goals against when he’s on the ice are down. When you give up less defensively, you don’t have to score as much.”
Keefe put Nylander, another highly-paid forward, in the same boat. He has two goals since opening night.
“(Defensively) Will is right there, too, the number of goals he’s given up when on the ice is reduced. We have high expectations for those two guys and they have high expectations of themselves. You look at 16 games (so far) and again, it’s way too early to make any statistical determinations, but their production is right there with a lot of teams in the league in terms of their (best) players in 5-on-5 production.”
The Leafs were to have had Tuesday off, but when they arrived at the practice rink for their mandated COVID-19 tests, Keefe steered them into the meeting room. They were still stinging from allowing Ottawa its first comeback from a four-goal deficit in 240 regular season games. Evgenii Dadonov became the fourth Senator to score the game-tying goal in the final five minutes of regulation and also bag the OT winner.
“You get a loss like that, the way it went down, you don’t want to let it fester,” Keefe said. “We needed to take the day off to rest the body, but needed to have some discussion.
“We’ve showed our team some stats defensively in which Ottawa is among the top teams in the NHL. They got more off the rush (Monday) than we had expected. We have a tremendous amount of respect for them, they gave it to us pretty good (splitting a two-game January series) down in Ottawa.
“(Monday) was a sign our game had been slipping. You saw it in our last game against Montreal and parts in our last game against Vancouver. It caught up to us.”