The Toronto Maple Leafs began the Western leg of their six-game road trip on an upbeat note, as their power play finally found its footing against the Colorado Avalanche in a 5-2 victory at Pepsi Center in Denver on Tuesday.
Kasperi Kapanen and Nazem Kadri scored twice, Auston Matthews added his 25th goal of the season and Frederik Andersen made 34 saves for Toronto, who stayed one point ahead of Boston in the battle for second place in the Atlantic Division with the victory.
The Leafs missed an opportunity to take advantage of a struggling Avs club in a 6-3 loss at Scotiabank Arena last month, but in the rematch they took an early lead on Kapanen’s first period breakaway goal and built on it by taking advantage of Colorado’s woeful penalty killing. Toronto took advantage of penalties to Tyson Barrie and a high-sticking double minor to J.T. Compher and scored three goals on the power play in a span of 1:49 and chasing Avs goalie Semyon Varlamov.
The outburst nearly equaled the number of goals the Leafs scored on the man advantage since Christmas and was a welcome sight to head coach Mike Babcock, after the power play had gone scoreless in spite of generating 23 shots in four opportunities in the loss to New York on Sunday.
“For a while there, it was going bad. We weren't doing good things and when you don't do good things, good things don't happen.” Babcock said. “When you start to do good things again and you get competitive – I thought Tavares made some unbelievable plays on it, to tell you the truth – but it was great to see our guys be rewarded. It gives them a bit of swagger back and obviously, it was a difference in the game.”
Toronto had to weather an early charge from the Avs (who came into the game losers of seven in a row) and adjusting to the high altitude conditions in Denver, with Andersen facing 17 first period shots and allowing only one goal on Ryan Graves long screenshot. In response, Babcock chose to shuffle his defensive pairings, shifting Morgan Rielly back to the left side, after playing mostly on the right since the acquisition of Jake Muzzin from Los Angeles.
“We didn't like how we broke out in the first period. As a group, we knew coming in with altitude and we traveled, we got in really late, we knew we were going to struggle.” We talked about the first 10 minutes and trying to survive.” (Switching up the pairings) was also something we've been talking quite a bit about just because we think [Rielly] should play on the left, we think he provides way more offence, way more shots and he's a better player over there. It's important to have your best guys play in their best spots. I had talked to [Muzzin] about it earlier anyway. I'm not saying that's going to be next game, but that's what we did tonight.”
Babcock is looking for the combos that work together the best within their existing top six since the odds of adding another defensemen before February 25th is a long shot. While GM Kyle Dubas might be able to add a depth defenseman with relative ease, salary cap considerations and the potential cost of either Kapanen or Andreas Johnsson likely limits any significant additions to the blueline until the summer.
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