Leafs Postgame: Blank to Blank

Photo Credit: Raj Mehta/USA TODAY SPORTS

The Toronto Maple Leafs are kinda on a roll right now. Win after win, point after point, pretty goal after pretty goal. The other night, they added strong defence to the mix when they shut out the Calgary Flames. Tonight’s scoresheet was identical to that game, though this one was less violent and a lot more dominant; a 4-0 rout of the divisional rival Detroit Red Wings in their own barn.

It’s 4:00 AM (apologies for that, by the way; an opportunity to play some of my own hockey for the first time in five months came up), so we’ll keep this brief. Auston Matthews opened up the night by basically ending Jonathan Ericsson’s life with an absolutely disgusting of the puck after an immensely dominant shift from his entire line.

It was the period’s lone goal, and the only goal for twenty minutes, but late in the second period, Toronto widened their gap courtesy of… Roman Polak?!

Let’s say something straight up: Polak had a pretty good game tonight. He pinched where he needed to, won a few foot races, got into lanes when he needed to, and scored this beauty. His underlying numbers weren’t overly great, as they rarely are, but he came through in moments that balanced them out. Anyway, James van Riemsdyk eventually followed with this:

Then, to top it all off, Nikita Soshnikov, who was hurt earlier in the game by a misguided stick, broke through a slumpy stretch to score this gorgeous goal. 

Toronto continued to press, constantly making the Red Wings feel outpaced and outmatched. When the final buzzer sounded, nobody was overly shocked with the result; though some in the lower bowl may have been shocked to see huge patches of seats already vacated. Yep, it was that kind of night in Detroit.

Gotta go with Frederik Andersen on this one. Back to back shutouts? That’ll fix a slumpy January, and to do it in a game where you had an injury scare is very impressive. Sure, it was only 22 shots against, but that’s still something to be very proud of.

With the win, the Leafs move back into the 3rd seed in the Atlantic with a 23-14-9 record; “Big Kid 0.500”, if you will. Now they’ll take on the Philadelphia Flyers tomorrow (or later today, I suppose). That’s going to be a huge game for them; win it, and you’ve made the second wildcard spot that much more of a potential fallback if things go wrong. Though, at this rate, they might not need it.

We’ll see you in a bit for pre-game. Right after I take this nap.