The Leafs come into Colorado playing the third of their six game road trip, coming off of a competitive win over the Montreal Canadiens, and getting goalied by Alexander Georgiev in New York against the Rangers. Despite being 4-1-1 in the Jake Muzzin era, you wouldn’t know that in Leafs land, so a Leafs win would certainly help the cause tonight, especially since it’s a late one.

I missed most of the first period, and heard it was really bad for the Leafs anyways, so I’m just going to pretend like it didn’t happen.

But, the seven seconds I did see of the first was this play.

One of the big problems plaguing Leafland is the fact that the Leafs power play has been ice cold, and honestly, I think it might be time to change things up a bit, maybe split up the units and spread it out a bit.

Oh, um…

I may have spoke to soon…

OK I GET IT!

With three power play goals in just 1:49, the Leafs appear to have “fixed their power play” (and by that, I mean their shooting finally regressed).

The third was a pretty standard “we’re up by three goals, we pretty much have this down, so let’s just shut it down and move on with out lives” period, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t without excitement.

First, Nylander made an excellent play here to set up Kadri for his second goal of the evening, as he didn’t even have to look to set up 43.

The Avs had a couple of garbage time power plays, and a goal just shortly after one of them, and the Leafs would walk out of Colorado with a 5-2 victory.

At even strength, it was mostly the Avs putting in work, especially in the first. Luckily for the Leafs, their power play decided to click and the Avs decided to take a lot of penalties, so that really helped in what would’ve either been a much closer game.

Only three players finished with a 5v5 CF% above 50%: Jake Gardiner, Andreas Johnsson, and William Nylander. One is playing on the third pair over Ron Hainsey and Nikita Zaitsev. The other two are on the third line when they would be much better with a certain elite goal scorer (although Nazem Kadri isn’t a bad second place).

I don’t mean to keep harping on Babs for deploying his players better, but when you preach that working hard will get you a better opportunity and continue to let your better players play less, it gets a bit annoying. Or does this only apply to bad players that you otherwise have no excuse for putting them in these positions?

Whatever, the Leafs won, and now they have another late night game on Thursday night against the Vegas Golden Knights at 10pm! Get your sleep tomorrow night, you’re gonna need it!

Kasperi popped in two, as did Naz, but heck of a game from William Nylander tonight. Did you see that pass?