Andersen, Marner leaders in bounce-back win
Leafs goalie buys time for offence to click, Marner has his best game of the season
Leafs goalie legend Curtis Joseph appeared during a break in the play in Monday’s Leafs-Kings game to help promote the release of three Leafs commemorative stamps.
He also got the chance to promote one of his successors.
“We should get some ‘Freddie, Freddie’ chants going,” Joseph told the sold-out crowd at the Air Canada Centre after goaltender Frederik Andersen made another highlight-reel save in Toronto’s 3-2 win against the Los Angeles Kings.
Andersen certainly deserved the tip of the hat from Joseph, tied with Roberto Luongo for third all-time in NHL goalie wins. The Leafs goalie played a key role along with Mitch Marner, who had his best game of the season, Patrick Marleau and Matt Martin. Joseph made his comments moments after Andersen got across the crease for a pad save on Tanner Pearson midway through the second period. That kept the score 1-0 and the Leafs took advantage moments later, with Tyler Bozak scoring a goal from in close on a power play for a 2-0 lead.
Andersen wasn’t perfect: Thee Kings broke down the right side on an odd man rush and scored 58 seconds later when Adrian Kempe got off a harmless-looking snap shot from the faceoff circle that fooled the Leafs goalie on the glove side.
That the goal came on the Kings’ 29th shot was an indication how well Andersen was playing.
Los Angeles made the final eight minutes of the game interesting, thanks to a bouncing puck that hopped over Morgan Rielly’s stick at the Kings’ blue line on a Leafs power play. Trevor Lewis scooped it and went the length of the ice on a breakaway, beating Andersen with a forehand-backhand deke to close the Leafs’ lead to one again. Marleau had started the high tempo final period with a tip-in on the power play to give the Leafs a 3-1 lead.
“If I get 50 shots, and I make saves, I treat the game the same way all the time . . . I don’t look at the goals so much as just the kind of goals I give up,” Andersen said.
Martin notched the game’s first goal, doing what he does best — getting in front of the goalie and creating havoc in the crease. It was that very same detail that played a part in a Marner goal that was called back, with the on-ice officials whistling Martin for goalie interference.
Marleau’s goal was his 99th gamewinning goal, and it vaulted him past Bobby Hull and Guy Lafleur for eighth all-time in the NHL.
Toronto (7-2-0) also handed the Kings (6-1-1) their first regulation defeat. It’s just the seventh time in team history the Leafs have won seven of their first nine games.
Andersen and the Leafs rebounded from a start where the Kings dominated the shot clock and zone play. Thanks to the goaltender, who kept the Kings off the scoreboard on their first 28 shots, Toronto began to match the Kings, outshooting them 15-4 over a stretch from the final five minutes of the second period to midway through the third.
Overall, the Kings outshot the Leafs 38-34.
Andersen, off to the side in the postgame dressing room with two reporters, looked a little deeper into his start to the season. He is 6-2-0 but it took Monday’s efficient effort to raise his save percentage to an even .900. And he might have been able to stop either Kings goal on Monday.
“The way I look at it . . . there’s three different kinds of saves: the ones you have no chance on, the ones you had a chance on, and the ones you should have had,” Andersen said.
“It’s tough, because you gotta be honest with yourself. If you think there’s a goal you shoulda had . . . then you feel you should have stopped it. But you have to be realistic in all ways, on all goals, too. It’s like plusminus on a defenceman, you can’t just look at it by itself, there’s more to it than that.”