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Toronto beats Texas at own game to take series lead; Matthews switches reps

June 6, 2018, 3:44 PM ET [308 Comments]
Mike Augello
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The Toronto Marlies continue to be road warriors in the Calder Cup Playoffs and bounced back from their first loss at Ricoh Coliseum with a solid 2-1 victory over the Texas Stars at the H-E-B Center in Cedar Park, TX on Tuesday.

Chris Mueller and Calle Rosen scored in the second period and Toronto limited the Stars to only 20 shots on goalie Garret Sparks, who registered his 12th playoff victory for the Marlies, who now lead the best-of-seven series two games to one.

The series through has seen a number of twists and turns, most notably that the winning team in each contest has allowed the first goal and come back to win.

After a scoreless first in which Toronto finished strong, the Stars opened the scoring at the 55 second mark of the middle frame on Sheldon Dries eighth goal of the postseason, but Toronto responded three minutes later as Mueller buried a pass from Andreas Johnsson past Mike McKenna to tie the game.




“I thought we had a really good first period in terms of just getting a feel for this building,” Marlies head coach Sheldon Keefe said, “It’s a good opponent so in terms of coming out of it 0-0, we had some really good chances, we had really good timing in the offensive zone – great start for us. And then they score. It has the ability when you’re on the road here to get out of control and snowball, but just the fact that our guys didn’t get rattled, just went out and played, scored a huge goal to tie it up and you really don’t look back from there.”

The Marlies have encountered difficulty getting shots through the Stars defenders, but Rosen was able to do so midway through the second to put Toronto into a lead they would not relinquish.




The win give the Marlies home ice advantage back in the series and guarantees a return to Toronto for Game 6 next Tuesday even if they lose Games 4 and 5 on Thursday and Saturday.

Frederik Gauthier and Pierre Engvall were both dinged up in Game 3. Gauthier was absent from the Toronto bench for the last part of the second period and all of the third and his status is unknown. Engvall fell awkwardly early in the third period and appeared in some discomfort, but did not leave the bench and took shifts afterwards.




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An interesting note from Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman regarding Leafs center Auston Matthews. The 20-year-old has switched representation from CAA (who has clients such as John Tavares and Sidney Crosby) to the Orr Hockey/Wasserman group (who among others represents Connor McDavid).

The main motivation for this move appears to be the shifting of agent Judd Moldaver to the Orr group. What is unknown is whether this will have any effect on Matthews contract status.

The 2017 Calder Trophy winner enters the final year of his entry-level deal next season and is eligible to sign a contract extension on July 1. The Leafs would likely prefer to get Matthews signed before the season begins, since another great season from the 2016 top pick would only increase his leverage in being one of the highest-paid players in the league next summer.

One way or the other, Matthews is going to make in the neighborhood of Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Carey Price and McDavid on his new deal, but with the expectation that the salary cap will go up as much as $5 Million for 2018-19, the sooner they get him signed, the better.

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