Leafs lose Woll but hold off Senators
OTTAWA — Joseph Woll suffered a setback after playing a major role in Toronto’s victory Thursday night.
Woll made 29 saves in a stellar performance as the Maple Leafs defeated the Ottawa Senators 4-3. However, Woll exited midway through the third period with an injury after making a save on Rourke Chartier and was in obvious pain, requiring assistance to leave the ice.
Prior to that, he made two huge saves on Vladimir Tarasenko and stopped Mathieu Joseph and Brady Tkachuk on a breakaway, among other key saves.
“It’s unfortunate, right,” said Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe. “He’s been playing so well. He was building such great momentum here on his season and his career. It’s a setback here now.
“He’s going to miss some time, for sure. We’ll determine the extent of it once we get home. Obviously, he’s the big reason why we get two points here tonight.”
Toronto led 3-2 at the time of Woll’s exit, but William Nylander provided some breathing room with his 13th of the season.
Mitch Marner, David Kampf and Calle Jarnkrok also scored for Toronto (13-6-4), while Martin Jones stopped 9-of-10 shots in relief.
“That team does a really good job of just putting pressure on you in your own zone,” said Marner. “I think we did a pretty good job of … getting out of our zone pretty quickly. When we needed to defend, we did a good job and obviously our goalies made a couple of massive saves for us.”
Josh Norris, Jacob Bernard-Docker and Claude Giroux scored for Ottawa (10-11-0), which got 18 saves from Anton Forsberg.
The Senators made it a one-goal game when Giroux scored on a one-timer with 1:53 remaining. But Ottawa was unable to complete the comeback despite pulling Forsberg and having a power play for the final 50.3 seconds.
“We did a lot of good things,” said Giroux. “Definitely frustrating right now. If we play like that every night we’re going to win more than we lose.
“As frustrating as it is right now, we played a pretty solid game and we’re trying to build something here so we’ve just got to keep pushing and try not to get too down here. Let’s keep pushing and go one game at a time.”
Kings 4, Canadiens 0
MONTREAL — Quinton Byfield scored twice, Cam Talbot earned a shut out and the Los Angeles Kings beat the Montreal Canadiens 4-0 on Thursday at Bell Centre to set an NHL record for longest road winning streak to start a season.
The Kings (16-4-3) improved to 11-0-0 away from home. The record for most consecutive road wins at any point of a season is 12.
Byfield, who also had an assist, continued his breakout season after a slow start to his career. The 2020 second-overall pick is up to eight goals and 13 helpers through 23 games.
Drew Doughty, with a goal and an assist, and Trevor Moore also scored for Los Angeles. Captain Anze Kopitar had three assists and Cam Talbot made 24 saves.