Staal-wart effort sinks Leafs at home
Wild forward extends his string of success against Toronto with game winner in the second period
TORONTO — On Tuesday afternoon, Minnesota Wild coach Bruce Boudreau heaped praise on the Toronto Maple Leafs, saying “they’re not that far away” from being consistently successful.
More than 24 hours later at the Air Canada Centre, the youthful Leafs were reminded by the Wild there’s still plenty of progress to be made.
The Leafs weren’t bad by any means — Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk was terrific in making 35 saves — but they weren’t as strong on the puck at times as they needed to be and an older Wild team took advantage Wednesday in front of a crowd of 18,944.
When the final buzzer sounded, the Wild handed the Leafs a 3-2 loss, its seventh win in a row against Toronto. Six of those victories have been decided by one goal.
The loss dropped the Leafs to 8-4 at the ACC, where they play five of their next six games.
Entering the game, the Leafs, with 25 points, had quietly fallen into a three-way tie with the Carolina Hurricanes and New York Islanders for last place in the Eastern Conference.
If you were of the belief before that the Leafs didn’t have much of a chance of making the playoffs next spring, they’re certainly not going to have an easy time attaining that goal now that they have hit the 25-game mark.
There is lots of hockey to played, but the Leafs were six points back of the final wild-card spot in the East with five teams separating them from the eighth-place Washington Capitals.
Defensive troubles on the Leafs’ part resulted in all three Minnesota goals, starting before the game hit the nine-minute mark.
Jason Zucker scored at 8:42, but only after Mikael Granlund and Mikko Koivu gave Nazem Kadri fits behind the Toronto net on the forecheck.
It was 2-0 for the visitors at 14:22 of the first when Chris Stewart split the defensive pair of Jake Gardiner and Connor Carrick like they weren’t even there, taking a great pass from Jared Spurgeon to break in on Frederik Andersen and beat the goalie with a forehand deke.
The Leafs got one back with under four minutes to play in the first when Ben Smith buried a big Kadri rebound at 16:50.
Toronto wasn’t able to sustain that momentum in the initial stages of the second period and quickly fell behind 3-1.
Eric Staal used to like padding his stats against the Leafs when he was a member of the Hurricanes and when he scored at 1:15, it was his 47th point in 43 games versus Toronto. The Staal goal came after Charlie Coyle hounded Morgan Rielly behind the net and got the puck to Staal, who slipped it under Andersen.
It’s not like the Leafs didn’t know what they would get in facing the Wild.
“They have some big forwards who can play the game really hard and so we have to be ready to play a 200-foot game,” Rielly said the day previously, “because that is what they do.”
Those few feet behind their own net proved worrisome for the Leafs.
Tyler Bozak isn’t known for scoring pretty goals regularly, but he brought to mind Mats Sundin when he beat Dubnyk midway through the second to get the Leafs to within one goal.
Bozak made defenceman Matt Dumba look foolish with a quick move at the hash marks and then went to his backhand a la Sundin, going high on Dubnyk’s glove side.
Babcock juggled the lines somewhat, putting William Nylander with Kadri and Leo Komarov and dropping Nikita Soshnikov to a fourthline role with Smith and Matt Martin as the middle period progressed.