EAST BESTS WEST
Toronto’s key snipers capitalize in 4-1 victory
You want meaningful games. And you wanted Tuesday. There were enough players with Ontario birth certificates and one — winger Josh Leivo — with a chip on his shoulder to make a regular-season tussle in December feel more like a mid-April playoff struggle.
That’s what happens when the Toronto Maple Leafs and their throng of leather-lunged supporters try to turn Griffiths Way into Yonge and Bloor.
And whether it was the Vancouver Canucks purposely starting their all-Ontario line of Tanner Pearson, Bo Horvat and Leivo, this wasn’t just another game.
Here’s what we learned as little things added up to a big deal as the Canucks fell 4-1 at Rogers Arena:
PERFECT PASS, PERFECT DEFLECTION
On a night where Jacob Markstrom was standing up to superlative snipers like William Nylander — he stopped the winger twice from scoring early off rippers — it looked like it was going to take something special to beat the starter in an emotional return to the net after attending his father’s funeral in Sweden.
What it took was a perfect pass and a perfect deflection in a game where there was little margin for error.
The Leafs struck first when John Tavares pounced on a wide shot off the endboards that hit the back of the net. His backhand feed found Auston Matthews open at the side of the net for the tap-in.
And in the second period, it was a perfect Tavares deflection of a point shot that bounced down and past Markstrom. To their credit, the Canucks kept pressing.
There were two deft deflections by J.T. Miller that nearly found the net. There were two
third-period breakaways by Brock Boeser that were stymied by Frederik Andersen, who made glove and pad saves.
And, finally, there was Leivo the ex-Leaf jamming home a loose puck in the crease to make it 2-1. Bo Horvat and Elias Pettersson were then foiled to make it look like a nail-biter finish.
But Tavares struck again with five minutes remaining before Zach Hyman scored into the empty net.
POTENT POWER PLAY UNPLUGGED
The Canucks have scored the most power-plays goals, have had the most opportunities and Horvat is destroying the opposition in man-advantage, offensive-zone draws.
The fourth-ranked unit was facing the 25th-rated penalty kill Tuesday, so the strategy seemed obvious.
Play hard. Draw penalties. Get an early lead and silence the Leafs faithful. Sounds simple, but why was it so hard? Give Sheldon Keefe credit. The Leafs coach has added structure to the skill set and in his first eight games behind the bench, the Leafs had six perfect kill nights.
On Tuesday, they surrendered only one power play when Mitch Marner took an interference minor on Leivo.
FERLAND STARTS FAST, EXITS QUICK
Micheal Ferland was making a difference.
The big winger, who missed 17 games with a concussion sustained in an Oct. 30 bout with Kyle Clifford in Los Angeles, did what he had to do Tuesday. He served some notice that time and space were going to be at a premium.
He had three first-period hits and two in a span of a dozen seconds when he levelled Cody Ceci in the offensive zone with a crunching hit and then dropped Alex Kerfoot in the neutral zone.
However, Ferland took just one second-period shift and left the ice, the bench and the game. The club announced that he was done for the night with an upper-body injury and the obvious speculation was that in delivering one of those big hits, he may have suffered a whiplash effect.
Ferland has been limited to 14 games and five points (1-4).
TAKE YOUR PICK: GAUDETTE OR KERFOOT?
The Canucks had serious interest in centre Kerfoot when the Vancouver native spurned the New Jersey Devils, who drafted him in the fifth round of the 2012 draft, and signed with the Colorado Avalanche as a college free agent on Aug. 23, 2017, after four seasons at Harvard.
Vancouver brass saw Kerfoot as a fit because the retirement of Henrik Sedin, the progress of Horvat, the future promise of Pettersson and the aging Brandon Sutter meant they could solve a riddle in the middle.
Kerfoot chose the Avalanche because the club was starting to turn it around with a younger and faster roster and he responded with 19 goals in 2017-18 and had 15 last season. However, in order to take the next steps, the Avs had to get grittier and dealt Kerfoot to the Leafs on July 1 in a multiplayer swap that brought the agitating Nazem Kadri to Denver. And that’s where it gets interesting.
The Canucks are high on Adam Gaudette, their 2015 fifth-round pick, because the Hobey Baker Award winner has become a reliable thirdline centre who can play with an edge. On Tuesday, the centres were often matched up against each other.