Eight is enough vs. Avalanche
Matthews hat trick powers team against returning MacKinnon’s squad
The Maple Leafs picked up in December where they left off in November.
Not just winning, but winning in style, with breakaways, betweenthe-legs shots, and passes that threaded the needle.
A now moustache-less Auston Matthews got a hat trick, the fourth of his career, while John Tavares and William Nylander each had a goal and two assists in an 8-3 win over the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night.
Throw in single goals from Pierre Engvall, Travis Dermott and Jason Spezza, and it all added up to Toronto’s most lopsided victory of the season.
“It was a really good effort from everybody throughout the lineup,” said Matthews, who heard his name being chanted after his third goal.
“It definitely gives you chills down your spine. It’s pretty special. This is a really special place to play, it’s fun when the crowd gets going like that and we play as well as we did tonight.”
Former Leaf Nazem Kadri scored twice for Colorado, but the current Leafs got production from all four lines and their defence to win their fifth in a row, and their 15th in 17 games.
The Avalanche had a goaltending issue to start the night, with Darcy Kuemper scratched late and Jonas Johansson pressed into duty. They were without a backup until the second period when Justus Annunen finally arrived.
“I don’t think it was an 8-3 game,” Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said. “We played against a really good team that had some adversity before the game with their goaltending, and we capitalized on that.
“That makes the game feel a lot different than it was. I thought it was a lot closer. I liked a lot of things about our game. But I don’t think we dominated at all.
“They had the puck a lot and we defended well.”
Free flow: It was a more free-flowing a game than a team that built a 3-0 lead might have wanted, but the Leafs pushed back after Colorado got within one early in the second period, and Matthews finished his trick to help nail down the home win. It came after Toronto had swept after a four-game road trip.
“That’s something we’ve done well this year, when momentum shifts to the other side, we don’t panic, and we try to fight our way back and get the momentum back on our side,” Matthews said. “It helps when you get the goaltending and guys go out there and win their shift and get things going.”
Things are going. Matthews has scored in four straight, and has six goals in his last four games to join the top 10 goal-scorers in the league. And with his fourth-straight game with multiple points, Tavares has joined the top 10 in scoring.
The Leafs are now the only team to have three players (Matthews, Tavares, Nylander) with at least 10 goals.
And they have as many goals in their last four games, 21, as they had in all of October (nine games).
Keep it going: The Leafs had won 10 games in November, tying a franchise record for most wins in a calendar month. Coach Sheldon Keefe did not want to lose sight of the bigger picture.
“It’s easy to focus on November because it was such a great month, and there’s a lot of reason for optimism and positivity because of the work that was put in there,” said Keefe. “So we feel very good about that. But when you’re talking about the quarter mark of the season, you can’t leave out October. There’s a lot of things then that we didn’t do well. We feel we’ve learned from it. We’ve found our game It’s a matter of consistency and that’s really that’s our focus: doing it all the time.”
Getting going: If skill and scoring is your thing, the first period was for you. The Leafs were relentless in attacking the Avalanche, intercepting passes and creating scoring chances seemingly at will.
Nylander opened the scoring, taking a pass in the neutral zone from Tavares, who seemed to thread the needle through Colorado defenders. Spezza made it 2-0, jumping on a loose puck in the crease following a hard shot from Nick Ritchie. Matthews made it 3-0, somehow left alone in front of Colorado goalie Jonas Johansson.
“Playing with the lead is important, especially against Colorado,” said Keefe. “To build the lead we did was great to see.”
Look in the mirror: The makeup of both teams was similar. The Leafs and Avalanche boast high-end talent on their top two lines, shutdown talent on their bottom two lines and an active defence.
“Absolutely, for sure,” said ex-Leaf Nazem Kadri, who knows both teams intimately. “But different conferences, it’s hard to kind of match that up, but definitely both are skilled possession teams that like to score.”