Morning-after recap: Late Registration

As the old cliche goes, the Leafs forgot about the first three minutes of last night’s game.

2:53 into the contest, the Leafs saw themselves being out attempted 9-3, and more importantly… down 2-0 on the scoreboard. Could they turn it around? Well, kind of.

When watching this live, it sure was a, “Oh that went in?” goal. The Hurricanes employ my NHL 18 strategy of just getting a one-timer off from anywhere on the ice,  Roman Polak is going a little slow to cover it and doesn’t get in the way of the play, Andersen’s caught off guard, and that’s one early goal against.

Try to follow the puck here, because I still haven’t found it. A cluster of people standing around looking lost and a quick goal off the faceoff. “YIKES” is all we have to say.

Not shown in this clip is Leo Komarov making a check in the corner that forced a bad pass that Patrick Marleau jumped on, and then just kind of gave it to the magic Matthews himself.

Right back in it.

Say some gangsta is dissing your fly girl.

You just give em one of these:

 

This highlight reel save was the best thing Frederik Andersen did last night… and maybe his best save all year? Nothing like a good old windmill… which the broadcast talked about for the next three hours.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Another man screened in front, a little deflection from Lindholm, and the #momentum is #gone from the Leafs.

Matt Martin kind of blindly threw this pass on net (he’s not even really looking at the net!) but thank goodness for Dom Moore, who has been a revelation this season so far. He picks up the garbage on the rebound and whaddya know, the Leafs are back within one.

Four on the year now for Hyman through ten games, after scoring six in 82 last year. Nice to see some puck luck going his way. After outmuscling Brett Pesce in front of the net, he calmly slides the puck in without really looking. Tie game???

Screens, again.

Slick pass, and an open enough shot from the slot. The Leafs fall behind, and this time, they won’t recover.

Sometimes you let the guy shoot on a rush. Sometimes this happens. Heck of a shot from McGinn and we’re down 5-3.

Morgan Rielly misses a poke check, Jeff Skinner shows off why he’s good, Jooris slides it home, and with under eight minutes to go, that was pretty much it for this game.

Yeesh.