TORONTO — It started two nights ago.
Mired in a dismal stretch that had seen them drop five of six games, the Toronto Maple Leafs found some life in an all-Canadian clash, with Auston Matthews recovering his golden touch and leading the blue-and-white to a dominant victory over the Calgary Flames on Monday. But the true test came Wednesday, with the arrival of the Colorado Avalanche.
Caught between hopes of being considered a genuine contender and a run of form that had them looking every bit the opposite, the Maple Leafs’ rout of the Flames seemed a sign of life. But to truly right the ship, to truly show that there may be an elite team buried beneath all these recent results, the Maple Leafs needed to make their presence known against one of the league’s elite — like an Avs team that rolled them with a 7-4 drubbing just two weeks ago.
Wednesday night, under the Scotiabank Arena lights, the Maple Leafs showed their worth.
“It was just a gritty win,” captain Auston Matthews said from the locker room after the dust settled on a 2-1 Toronto victory. “They’ve got some high-end skill, high-end speed over there. I thought we did a good job — when we needed to defend, we checked hard, and (Joseph Woll( was there to back us up at the end, too.”
It didn’t all come together quite as quickly as it did a few nights ago, when the Flames sat across the sheet. This time, the Maple Leafs had to wade through a familiar, tense opening period, weathering dangerous looks from the high-flying Avs as their own sequences fizzled out before they got to Colorado netminder Mackenzie Blackwood.
But in the second, Toronto came alive. Starting the period on a power play carried over from the previous frame, the home side put their offensive might to good use, William Nylander and Matthews whirling around the offensive zone, before No. 34 eventually threw a puck on net and watched it tumble in past Blackwood.
The Avs didn’t need long to punch back, wiring home a power-play marker of their own just two minutes later. But instead of wilting in the wake of another blown lead, this time, the Maple Leafs kept pushing. They kept building, kept attacking, trying to chip away at Colorado’s defence, while Woll stood tall in the cage, keeping them level.
In the end, it was a wild sequence three minutes into the third period that clinched the night for Toronto.
Hit with a too-many-men call a minute-and-a-half into the final frame, the Maple Leafs’ penalty killers hopped over the boards. Anyone who’s watched the club of late could feel the game slipping through their grasp, the bottom falling out beneath them, a steady effort about to be undone by yet another ill-timed penalty.
Instead, the Leafs held the fort, diving around the defensive zone to try to get a stick or a foot or anything else in the way of Colorado’s crisp passes. And with less than a minute left on the Avs’ power play, the home side caught a colossal break. The Maple Leafs’ killers flung the puck down the ice to clear the zone, but before it could careen all the way down to Blackwood, veteran official Kelly Sutherland blew a tire, hit the deck, and accidentally stopped the puck halfway down the sheet.
Unfortunately for Colorado, the sequence set the puck on a tee for a streaking Steven Lorentz, who picked it up, carried it into Colorado’s zone, and sniped it past Blackwood and a stunned Avalanche defender.
A moment of much-needed luck for a club that seemingly hasn’t had a sniff of it lately.
“A fortuitous bounce, obviously — it’s kind of funny how the hockey gods work out,” veteran defender Jake McCabe said of the bizarre game-winner. “Sometimes you get those bounces, sometimes you don’t. I feel like they haven’t really been bouncing our way the last couple weeks.”
“We were just trying to get a clear,” said Lorentz, who tucked home his sixth of the year via the short-handed gift. “I’m not too sure what happened with the ref. I was trying to get a change and I just saw him go down. I saw the puck squirt loose, so I thought I might as well reroute and try to go get a shot on net. I was fortunate enough to pick a corner, and the rest was history.
“I’ll take that bounce — it seems like I’ve had a few bounces go the other way this year, so we’ll take that one.”
While there’s no question the absurd misplay gifted Toronto a game-winner they shouldn’t have had the chance to bury at all — and delivered them a win on a night they got outshot 39-26 — it’s the bigger picture that matters most to these Leafs. Not the 2-1 score line, nor the extra W, nor the two points that leave them tied atop the division, but the approach that carried them through this one.
More important than the short-handed goal was the Maple Leafs getting a much-needed penalty kill, in crunch time, to keep the Avs off the board. And more important than the goals the home side scored was the play of Woll. Seemingly at his best Wednesday night, it was the 26-year-old’s sterling outing that allowed Lorentz’s odd short-handed marker to wind up as the game winner, rather than a footnote in another Colorado rout.
“He was excellent,” head coach Craig Berube said of his goaltender late Wednesday. “Made some real good saves, held us in there in the first period. … The last three games, he’s played really good.”
The netminder’s last three games have all finished with a W on the board. His last four outings have, in fact, been the only wins the Maple Leafs have earned in March, with Anthony Stolarz going 0-4 in that span.
And in this one, undoubtedly Toronto’s biggest victory of the month, there was no mistaking Woll’s impact.
“Massive. The biggest, honestly,” said McCabe. “He stood tall, bailed me out in the third there — I turned it over and he had that save right down the pipe. But that wasn’t the only big save — he had numerous big saves, great with the puck, overall just super steady.”
“His resilience is huge,” added Lorentz. “He probably saw seven or eight minutes of their top six in the last 10 (minutes), and he just stood on his head. He looked calm and cool in the net, he kept pucks in front of him, he wasn’t trying to make spectacular, flashy saves. He did a great job. We just have the most confidence playing in front of him — we broke down a few times, we had some shifts where we couldn’t get the puck out of our end, and he was there to back us up.”
“It doesn’t really matter what’s going on in the game — he could be playing good, he could be playing bad, he’s just always got the same attitude, the same mentality,” said Matthews. “He approaches things the same every night, and he’s extremely focused. Tonight, he was excellent for us. He made some big saves there at the end to keep it a tie game.
“I just thought he was all over it tonight.”
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For the man himself, it was what he saw in front of him that made the difference in this one, particularly his club’s ability to hold on through the end of this one-goal nail-biter. But more than that, it was the overall approach that stood out most, the Maple Leafs’ willingness to dig in and keep battling ’til the clock hit zero.
“Patience,” Woll said of what he felt his Maple Leafs showed in this one. “It’s a tight game. And we stuck to our systems like we preached, got a go-ahead goal, and then we just continued to play our game.”
His head coach echoed the sentiment, heaping praise on his club for the fight they showed against one of the league’s best.
“You know, that’s a very good team over there. They put you on your heels a lot,” said Berube. “But we battled, and blocked shots, and we were competitive. There’s things we’ve got to do better, obviously. But overall, it was a competitive game.
“We competed hard, and did what we had to do to win the game.”
Whether a Wednesday night win in March truly moves the needle will depend on what happens next, of course. On whether this hard-fought, half-gifted victory can be the start of a run of good form that carries Toronto into the meaningful games next month, rather than a glimpse of quality before old habits return.
For McCabe, as the Maple Leafs head to New York to begin a two-game road trip, the path to the former is clear, the next steps simple.
“Just build,” he said. “Just build our confidence. Momentum is a big thing in this league. You know, when you lose a few in a row, sometimes that confidence just isn’t quite there like it was when you were winning three in a row.
“So, (this can) kind of catapult us here the rest of March. And then in April, we obviously get into crunch time, as we’ve been talking about here the last couple weeks. So, a big two games on the road here.”
