If I had to pick one team to beat out of the Boston Bruins and Colorado Avalanche; it’s the Bruins every time.
The Leafs came out on top of the Bruins, even though they got off to a very slow start producing just two shots in the first period. After Babcock praised Andersen for making a number of quality saves (11) in the first period, he lit a fire under the rookie’s behinds and got them skating harder and winning more battles as they came out the gates flying in the second period.
Who better to kick start the Buds engine than the Nylander-Matthews combo? Matthews fired a rocket of a wrister over Tuukka Rasks glove giving the Leafs a 1-0 lead just 1:44 into the second period. Hyman, van Riemsdyk and Brown all chipped in with a goal of their own in the Leafs 4-1 victory.
Last night Antoine Bibeau had his debut as the Leafs faced Colorado. Both teams were coming in on a back-to-back and the Leafs were coming off a triumphant victory as the Avalanche were coming off an embarrassing loss to the Canadiens in a 10-1 shellacking.
The fact the Avalanche got throttled so hard the night before made me a bit worried heading into the game. You have to figure they were going to want to win the game after such a garbage performance the night before.
Toronto was all over Colorado in the first and third period; they literally controlled the play vast majority of those periods and had a number of high quality scoring chances. They had 20+ shots in the first period which was a season high and couldn’t capitalize. More often than not when you don’t cash in on so many ample opportunities it comes back to haunt you later in the game, just as it did for the Maple Leafs last night.
Varlamov made 51 saves for the Avalanche and he literally stole the two points from the Leafs as they simply couldn’t beat him. Not too often do you see a goalie play as well as Varlamov did last night, I guess you could say he was making up for his performance the night before. Toronto played well over the weekend even though they only got two out of four points.
Team scoring:
Leafs rank (9) with 79 goals. Leafs rank (10) with 81 goals against. Leafs rank (7) with 2.93 goals per game. Leafs rank (4) with 3.00 goals against per game. Leafs rank (3) with 33 shots per game. Leafs rank (7) with 32 shots against per game. Leafs rank (22) in save percentage with a .906. (thanks Enroth) Leafs rank (13) in penalty minutes with 293. Leafs rank (16) in power play goals with 15. Leafs rank (25) in power play opportunities with 82. Leafs rank (6) in shorthanded goals against with 3. Leafs rank (21) in power play goals against with 13.
Toronto has three home games this week, San Jose on Tuesday, Arizona on Thursday and Pittsburgh on Saturday.
Have a great week!
Thanks for reading.