Leafs Postgame: Wish Upon A Star

“When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you!”

“Even a Leafs win?” “Okay, almost anything.” “Please?”

Apparently the Hockey Gods were created by the Disney Corporation. The Leafs, somehow, beat the high-flying Dallas Stars, in a wildly and wacky game.

The Leafs got down to business pretty early, courtesy of everybody’s favourite misfit line of Michael Grabner, Byron Froese, and Brad Boyes. It was the latter who picked up the goal, taking Froese’s kinda-sorta fanned pass and jamming at the puck until it slipped past Antti Niemi to give the Leafs the lead.

That lead lasted less than a minute. The Stars came rushing back with their top line, leaving Tyler Seguin to set up Jamie Benn. Benn fooled Morgan Rielly with a wicked toe drag and roofed it past James Reimer to tie the game.

Normally, this would be time to panic. But Reimer absolutely stole the show from here, stopping pucks left and right while the Leafs went to work. Boyes appeared to pick up another goal, but a Coaches Challenge found that Byron Froese was offside in his carry-in. Joffrey Lupul avenged him just 21 seconds into the second period, however, and did so again at the period’s midway point, even giving Boyes an assist on the play.

Toronto’s productivity slowed down from here as the Stars flooded the offensive zone, to no avail. Recognizing that even thirteen seconds was still enough for a team with Tyler Seguin to come back from a 4-1 deficit, Morgan Rielly sniped a wrister as additional insurance. Also, as revenge for Jamie Benn spearing Nazem Kadri in the junk.

James Reimer wasn’t even supposed to play tonight; Jonathan Bernier was originally pegged as the starter. But he did, and he had arguably his best game of the calendar year, stopping 43 of 44 shots against. 

The Leafs now have a tough decision to make. Heading into tonight, Bernier was supposed to double up on Reimer’s games played count, and now they’re two apart. Reimer has a higher save percentage, lower GAA, and both of Toronto’s wins; tonight’s arguably a stolen one. Babcock has stated that Reimer has earned the chance to go back in net on Wednesday, but where do you go from there if he has even a remotely solid performance?

The Leafs return to the ice on Wednesday night, when they take on the Winnipeg Jets. Winnipeg is theoretically flying high with a 7-4-1 record at the moment but are actually in 5th place in the super good (and also the Avalanche) Central Division. If the playoffs started right now, they’d make it based on being better than the 4th place team in the Pacific, though, in actuality, they’d be first in that division.