It was the tale of a hot goalie in the Toronto Maple Leafs’ season-opening loss to the Montreal Canadiens, and in their second loss of the season against the New York Rangers, it was much of the same.

While Igor Shesterkin didn’t have a jaw-dropping shutout to the tune of 48 saves, he robbed the Maple Leafs of a number of quality chances and made all the saves he needed to secure a 4-1 win for his team. Perhaps nobody felt it more than William Nylander, who had at least two quality chances taken away from him in the third period. The Rangers’ record improved to 4-0-1, still without a regulation loss, and dropped the Maple Leafs’ to 3-2-0.

The score will make it seem worse than it was in reality. It was a textbook good hockey game between two good teams. Two of their goals were empty-netters and the Maple Leafs outshot them 35-29. It just so happened that Shesterkin stood slightly taller than Stolarz in the end and the Rangers made their opponent pay by capitalizing on the few mistakes they made.

Shesterkin stopped 34 of those 35 shots, giving him a .971 save percentage (SV%) on the night and further ammunition in his pursuit of a new contract, with numbers in the ballpark of $11 million annually being floated for the 2021-22 Vezina Trophy winner. He had a record of 2-0-1 with a 2.28 goals-against average (GAA) and a .921 SV% in three games on the season heading into the game against Toronto.

In a positive light for the Maple Leafs, Auston Matthews scored for the second game in a row after being held off the scoresheet in the first three games of the season, and despite taking the loss, Anthony Stolarz gave them as good a chance to win as he has every game he’s started this season. He gave the fans a scare twice during the game after forcing stoppages in play while struggling to stand up, but both instances were revealed to be equipment-related. Chris Tanev also went to the dressing room near the end of the second period after blocking a shot but came back for the third period.

All things considered, it was another game with positives to take away from it, but there’s a greater-than-zero chance there were also several instances and aspects to it that Craig Berube hated and will look for his team to improve on ahead of their upcoming back-to-back on Monday and Tuesday.