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The Toronto Maple Leafs continue to be befuddling when it comes to consistency, following up a road loss to the last-place Montreal Canadiens on Saturday with a much better performance in a 5-2 victory over the Eastern Conference-leading Florida Panthers at Scotiabank Arena on Sunday.
John Tavares scored twice, Morgan Rielly, Ilya Mikheyev and Auston Matthews scored his league-leading 48th goal, and Petr Mrazek made 34 saves for his second straight victory for Toronto, who moved into a third-place tie with Boston with 87 points.
“I think we remained committed to (playing two-way hockey) all the way from the start of the game. We made a mistake on the first goal for sure, but that’s the most dangerous team in the league, maybe say for Colorado, on the rush and I didn’t think we gave up anything on the rush today so it was a huge challenge for our team to do that and we stuck with that all the way through.… Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said after the game. “When you do that and you’re playing against the top offensive team in the NHL, you’re taking away a lot of their weapons right there and it gave us a chance.…
The Leafs battled back after the more physical Panthers took a 2-1 lead on goals by Brandon Montour and Ryan Lomberg, as Mitch Marner set up Tavares for a pair of power-play goals, becoming the fastest player in Leafs history to register his 300th career NHL assist. Mikheyev added his 14th goal of the year on another Marner helper to extend the lead and Matthews scored into the empty net to move one goal ahead of Leon Draisaitl in the race for the Rocket Richard.
Toronto faces a difficult stretch of five of the next six games on the road, beginning on Tuesday with their only visit to TD Garden this season to face the red-hot Boston Bruins. Boston has gone 8-1-1in their last 10 and got captain Patrice Bergeron back from an elbow infection on the weekend.
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New Leaf Nick Abruzzese will be joining the club in Boston and may see some playing time before the end of the regular season.
"(It’s) just an incredible feeling to be able to sign with the Leafs, (I’m) really excited about joining the organization and to be able to take the next step in my hockey career." Abruzzese said to Terry Koshan of the Toronto Sun.
Matthew Knies (#LeafsForever) snipes one past Brandon Bussi from the net-front to give @GopherHockey the 1-0 lead over Western Michigan.
— J.D. Burke (@JDylanBurke) March 27, 2022
Assists to Brock Faber (#GoKingsGo) and Ben Meyers (NCAA FA) pic.twitter.com/E9tYczruPJ
The 22-year-old forward signed his ELC on the weekend and may not be the only NCAA product joining the club. 2021 second-rounder scored in his second straight game as Minnesota defeated Western Michigan and advanced to the Frozen Four, which take place April 7-9 in Boston.
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Lot’s of â¤ï¸ for the 💙ðŸ¤
— Norman James (@IamNormanJames) April 26, 2021
Convo on Podcast.#theleafsconvo https://t.co/Xdn3CDLVCI