Let’s be honest, this was going to be a nightmare.

They’re playing one of the best teams in the league on the second half of a back to back and the 3rd game in 4 nights on a long road trip in a completely different time zone, all while taking out Connor Carrick and Frederik Andersen for Roman Polak and Curtis McElhinney. This game had disaster written all over it.

But, the Leafs managed to make a game out of it. Not a good one, but it was something.

To honour the Maple Leafs performance in the first period, I’m going to put no effort in talking about it.

The second saw the Leafs start to pick things up a bit. Now, this was mostly due to the Kings having a 3-0 lead, but they were still putting up chances. Unfortunately for them, Jonathan Quick was on his game. Every scoring chance the Leafs got, Quick stopped it (that must be nice).

And then, to put more salt in the wound, the Kings put up two more goals to give the Kings a comfy 5-0 lead.

But, these aren’t your older brother’s Maple Leafs. This team is resilient. This team knows how to put the puck in the net. This team has seen leads blown before their very eyes, so it’s about time they got one.

Late in the period, Nylander sprung Matthews for a breakaway, but he couldn’t capitalize… because Kopitar slashed him, and it’s a penalty shot! Matthews put on some nice moves, and beat Quick for his first career penalty shot goal, and the first goal for the Leafs.

And that would be all for the peri… wait, what? Matthews made a great play to grab the puck, and get it on the stick of Rielly, who would beat Quick with 1.5 seconds left to make it 5-2.

The Leafs pressed hard out of the gate, but struggled to muster anything up until 8 minutes in, as Connor Brown would deflect a Jake Gardiner shot, and the Leafs would make it a game, now down by two goals with 12 minutes left.

The Leafs kept up the pressure and looked poised to make this even more interesting… aaand Hyman just took a penalty. The Leafs killed it off, but it also killed some time.

The Leafs put on more pressure with the extra attacker, at one point having a huge scramble in front of the net, except Muzzin stopped the play by knocking the net off.

Wait, that’s a penalty shot with two minutes left. Matthews would be up again, and try to snipe it short side past Quick, but he shot it a bit high.

The mayhem continued, but to no avail, they would come up short.

Well, looks like we’re gonna have to beat St. Louis to salvage this road trip.

Considering that most of hockey Twitter went to bed for most of this game, I will leave you with one tweet…

Even in the darkest of times, always remember: Auston Matthews is a Toronto Maple Leaf.