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The Toronto Maple Leafs simply put had a bad 24 hours. Following the news that Hart Trophy and Rocket Richard winner Auston Matthews will miss a minimum of three weeks with a knee sprain, Leafs scheduled starter Matt Murray was injured in warmups and forced head coach Sheldon Keefe to insert Ilya Samsonov on short notice against the Ottawa Senators. Samsonov was not his usual sharp self, but he had a lot of company as the Sens snapped Toronto’s six-game home winning streak with a 6-2 victory over the Leafs at Scotiabank Arena on Friday.
Joey Anderson and William Nylander scored for Toronto, but Derick Brassard’s second-period power-play goal snapped a 2-2 tie and the Sens scored four unanswered on a Leafs club that appeared not to have any defensive awareness whatsoever on the night. Toronto put forth their usual subpar effort against a bottom-dwelling club, playing down to their competition and not matching their effort.
The story of the game is missed opportunities. We had lots of opportunities to score more than one in the first period and make them pay for it. We took poorly-timed penalties that are momentum drainers,” Keefe said after the game. “It happened similarly in the second period when we kind of got rolling. There were some momentum-killing penalties and just some really sloppy, careless mistakes that ended up in our net.”
It was an unusually poor night for the checking line centered by David Kampf, who were on the ice for Brady Tkachuk’s goal 23 second into the middle frame, and Drake Batherson’s dagger late in the second, caused by Justin Holl’s unadvised pinch into the Ottawa zone.
The Leafs loss marks the seventh defeat to clubs at the or near the bottom of the NHL standings and the second this week, after losing 3-2 to Montreal in overtime last Saturday.
The Murray situation was confusing prior to the game, as the Leafs goaltender appeared hampered after taking a high shot from Nylander in warmups. While there was no obvious debilitation afterward, Keefe indicated after the game that the injury was not a reoccurrence of the adductor injury from earlier in the season, but was serious enough to keep him from starting Murray against his former club.
All the talk tonight is about Matt Murray, has the biggest shoulder/arm pads in the league, takes one off the shoulder and basically pulls himself out of the game 😲 softest player in the game 🤦 Keefe should have forced him to play, we in Sens land have seen this movie before pic.twitter.com/1qsP19XSj0
Both Murray and Samsonov were off the ice at practice on Saturday and Keefe said that Murray has been dealing with an ankle injury.
"It's something that he's been dealing with for a while and had settled," Keefe said as per SI’s David Alter. "It flared up on him a little bit and we didn't feel comfortable for him playing and the medical team held him out."
Samsonov is expected to get the start against the Washington Capitals on Sunday, but it is unclear whether the Leafs will recall either Erik Kallgren or Joseph Woll from the AHL to backup.
Toronto Maple Leafs Blogger • 
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