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The Toronto Maple Leafs made their return to Air Canada Centre after spending most of December on the road, but they had a difficult time in their first game back, losing 2-0 to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday.
The club honored the late Johnny Bower in a touching pre-game ceremony in which the Hall-of-Famer’s wife, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and former teammates gathered in front of the Maple Leafs goal. The club also held a celebration of life for the four-time Stanley Cup Champion at ACC on Wednesday afternoon.
Cedric Paquette and Alex Killorn scored midway through the middle frame for Tampa Bay and Vasilevskiy kept Toronto off the scoreboard with 29 saves to register his 26th win and sixth shutout of the season.
“I didn't like their first goal, we made a mistake behind the net. Even their second goal was a line change by us and I didn't like that.… Leafs head coach Mike Babcock said after the game. “We had lots of opportunity and their goalie was real solid, to say the least. They're a veteran team that knows how to play, they play well and they can really score, but they can defend as well.…
Tampa Bay represents a measuring stick for the young Leafs and the club now knows that they have a distance to go before they match up favorably to the team that could win the President’s Trophy.
While Vasilevskiy and Frederik Andersen are both having excellent seasons and Tampa Bay and Toronto are both powerhouse offenses in the top five of the NHL, the Lightning have a sizable experience advantage over the Leafs and a defense corps that has one franchise cornerstone in Victor Hedman and potentially another in rookie Mikhail Sergachev.
With Nikita Zaitsev out, Morgan Rielly, Jake Gardiner and Ron Hainsey saw heavy minutes and veteran Roman Polak played more minutes than he normally would as a bottom pairing defenseman.
Polak was -2 on the night and exposed by the speedy Lightning skaters, but also showed the physical presence that Toronto is in short supply of, coming to Andersen’s defense when Vladislav Namestnikov knocked down the Leafs goaltender late in the first period.
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The Leafs two prospects participating in the 2018 World Junior both advanced to Thursday’s semi-final round and had an impact for their team.
2017 top pick Timothy Liljegren played 18:36 in Sweden’s 3-2 win over Slovakia and again made his presence known by laying out a nice hit on forward Villam Cacho along the boards in the second period.
Great pad save by Joe Woll to preserve the USA lead pic.twitter.com/gOgTnWsKFn
— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) January 3, 2018
Woll is also on the radar along with teammate Jake Oettinger for the US Olympic team heading to Pyeongchang, South Korea next month, as the announcement of American roster on New Year’s Day included only one goaltender.
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