Leafs Postgame: Dancing with the Devils

It was a night of celebration for the Toronto Maple Leafs. A few people had some endurance milestones; Dion Phaneuf was playing in his 800th game and Mike Babcock was coaching his 1000th, but what really mattered was the pre-game tribute to Darryl Sittler, whose famous 10-point game was 40 years ago this week.

Oddly enough, the Leafs and New Jersey Devils decided that a fitting tribute would be to put the sticks away and avoid scoring at all costs. Even with the shootout considered, the teams only put five pucks in the back of the net in a 3-2 Leafs shootout victory.

At first, it looked like this was the Devils’ game to lose. Jacob Josefson made the most of a puck-over-glass penalty to Matt Hunwick to put his team up just four minutes in, but Shawn Matthias was quick to respond with his fifth of the year, planting himself firmly in front of the net to redirect a pass by Keith Kinkaid into the back of the net.

That calmed the game down for quite some time. In fact, both teams were relatively timid about getting the puck on net, and until the third period, nobody was able to find mesh. That was until David Schlemko beat James Reimer with a point shot that brought the Devils back ahead. To make matters worse, the Leafs lost their time out with a failed coaches challenge on the goal, as the referees felt that Lee Stempniak’s light bump on Reimer didn’t impede him from stopping the puck.

The Leafs pulled Reimer for a sixth attacker in the period in search for a goal, and eventually, they found one. Tyler Bozak went to the high slot and got into perfect position to rip a wrister that sent the game into overtime. That didn’t solve much, and in a lot of ways, the shootout didn’t either, but PA Parenteau scored the only necessary goal to give his team the win.

This is another game that the Leafs had control of front-to-back, and they got rewarded for it. Something that really helped, as much as we like to harp on a certain broadcaster for over-emphasising it, was Toronto’s prowess on the draw. Going 64% at the faceoff dot certainly improves your chances of controlling the flow of the game, and when you combine that with having absolutely no hesitance to move a player into an available position in the slot, good things happen.

If the Boston game was the prototypical “good Nazem Kadri” game, this was Tyler Bozak’s version. He assisted on Matthias’ tally, scored the game-tying goal, played a shade over 20 minutes, had two takeaways, was one of the team’s top possession players at an insane 76.9%, and was an even crazier 80% at the draw. Bozak’s all-around game has been noticeably better this year, and this game was an example of what happen with him if everything goes right at once.

The Leafs will now take a trip across the province to take play in their secondary home venue, the Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata. There, they’ll face the Ottawa Senators, who are in the “just got blown out by Edmonton” stage in their most recent cold streak. Puck drop for that game is tomorrow at 7:00 PM.