Marner, Matthews a winning combo
MMgood. MMambo. MMojo.
Surely it doesn’t require genius, yoking Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews. Yet that forward line combo had been strongly resisted ’round these parts lo these several years.
When Sheldon Keefe put the mates together for the third period on Saturday, it was largely to smack William Nylander and Kasperi Kapanen upside the head.
In Monday’s matinee — the Next Gen game at Scotiabank Arena, tons of youngsters in the house — Keefe started with that unit, alongside Zach Hyman, and stuck with it even though the coaching staff had discussed breaking them up between the second and third periods.
A good thing too, because Marner and Matthews found magic in the final frame of a game that swung wildly one way, then the other, combining for seven points as the Maple Leafs persevered over the Hurricanes 8-6, extending Toronto’s winning streak to five games. Marner struck for two goals and three assists, Matthews countered with a goal and a magnificent helper.
Marner’s pair came within a breathtaking span of 59 seconds, bracketed around the 6-6 knotter by Tyson Barrie. Fifty-three seconds between Marner’s first and the Barrie goal. With his second — unassisted, pouncing on the puck off a faceoff for the eventual winner, a mere six seconds after Barrie lit the lamp — Marner racked up five points to equal a single-game career high. Not the fastest two goals in Leafs history, which was four seconds, but whip quick.
“Our adrenalin’s pumping,’’ said Marner of that quite spectacular 59-second episode blur, and barely having a second to catch his own breath, though a timeout by Carolina helped. “You’re fired up. That moment, you’re just riding the high. You feel like you can play forever. You’re feeling like a little kid out there.”
(And Marner made time in the dressing room afterwards, post-scrum, for a one-on-one interview with nine-yearold Will Fox, doing a mini-me interview.)
But golly, what a whirlwind of an encounter as the Leafs jumped out to a 3-0 start before all defence went out the window at both ends of the ice, Toronto trailing 5-3 by the end of the second.
“That went according to plan, so there’s nothing to talk about,’’ coach Keefe deadpanned when he strode into the interview room.
Let’s begin, however, with Keefe’s decision to keep his two young studs together, a choice that cascaded through the lineup and appeared to render John Tavares the odd man out, relatively speaking, as he ended up with Pierre Engvall and Ilya Mikheyev as his wingers, although Jason Spezza was plugged into that line as well. Didn’t seem to hurt the captain, in any event, as Spezza opened the scoring by jamming a wraparound effort by Tavares behind James Reimer — welcome back,
James. Tavares’ 3-0 marker drove Reimer out of the game with the Leafs feasting on a double minor, Brett Pesce catching Hyman in the face with a high stick. Albeit, Toronto also surrendered a short-handed goal to Brock McGinn — Carolina’s league-leading eighth shortie.
Under the previous coach, you know — that guy? — Matthews and Marner had spent only 231 minutes playing together five-on-five over threeplus years. M&M made no secret about their eagerness to two-step on the ice other than on the power play, but their wish fell on deaf ears mostly.
“First, we just wanted to make sure that we’re defensively stable,” said Marner about going over the boards together on Monday. “We’re doing the right things on the defensive side of the puck, staying above people … we know if we stay patient with it, we’re going to get our opportunities, we’re going to score. If not, we’re at least going to get those opportunities for good looks.
“And that’s what we did today. We stayed patient with it, we didn’t get frustrated throughout the game, we stuck to what we could do the best.”
It took a while for the alchemy to sizzle but, as Marner noted, they got there in the end.
Marner’s breakaway unassisted thingy was delightful to watch and he spread his arms wide afterwards in celebration. But probably the most handsome connection between the two was on Marner’s second goal: Matthews executing a pivot at the side of the crease, then dishing to Marner, who scored on one knee. Actually, Matthews had also taken a knee on his earlier one-timer, streaking past the hash marks for his 24th of the season.
“That’s a hell of a play by him,’’ said Marner of Matthews’ setup. “Hell of a pass. I kind of knew. I thought he was going to try something like that and get it over to me. We’d talked about trying to find that other side of the ice. Soon as I saw him do that kind of a spino-rama, I thought he was going to sling it over to me. Great pass, great vision. I was lucky enough to put it in.”
Matthews echoed Marner’s pleasure in playing on the same line. “We’ve always felt that we’ve had fun playing with each other in the past, where it was for a couple of shifts or for a period or for a game. We never really had consistency playing together. But he’s a really great player. We try to feed off each other, like we did (today).” Hyman made a dandy play on Matthews’ goal, with the secondary assist to Marner. But Matthews to Marner at 6-6 lifted the roof off the arena.
“The crowd got into it,” said Matthews. “The guys on the bench, on the ice, really got into it. Momentum shifts to your side. Then right off the draw (Marner) goes in there to score right after the other team takes a timeout. That crowd was buzzing. That energy feeds all the guys on the ice.”
None of it might have happened had Keefe veered toward his inclination to separate them with 40 minutes gone and the Leafs labouring. Because the Matthews-Marner tandem is, the coach acknowledged, on trial. “I would say we’re still kind of in the experimental stage. We talked about it after the second period, whether maybe we should switch back. We decided not to, obviously, and it worked out. How it’s going to work long term — it’s not necessarily just on how that goes, but how things underneath them go.’’
So Keefe stuck to it. “We felt like there’s potential there. Something could spark itself and get going.” Adding: “It made sense for me in a lot of ways, just in terms of the way one sees the ice and passes and the way one finishes.’’
A final footnote. Recall that in the very first game of the season, that other coach didn’t dress Spezza, who had his entire extended family in the stands. Which ticked off the players a lot.
On this afternoon, as a coaching counterpoint, Keefe put Spezza in the lineup. As a thoughtful gesture, one dad to another.
“To be honest, the biggest thing, I had a sense that, Next Gen (game) here, he would have his girls in the building. I wanted to give him a chance to have that little moment.”
The kindness of Keefe. My, how times have changed.