The Toronto Maple Leafs escape the snowy, COVID affected north to drop in on “Sin City” for their second and final game versus the 23-14-1 Las Vegas Golden Knights, the Pacific Division leading team.
Vegas has not exactly lit up their home record this year, sporting a middling 12-9-1 record. Alex Pietrangelo and Shea Theadore form the top pair and some guy named Chandler Stephenson from Saskatoon is leading their offence with 35 points in 37 games.
The visitors were hoping that energetic winger Ondre Kase could rejoin for tonight’s game and perhaps even move into Mitchell Marner’s role on the right side with team leading scorer Austin Mathews.
Both teams were coming off one goal losses, so there was plenty of motivation. The Toronto squad got off to a pretty fast start with William Nylander deking in to score his 16th off a great lead pass from Morgan Rielly. That was Reilly’s 11th point in his last 8 games. With Max Pachiority (wrist) and Theadore (COVID) out, the Vegas power play still came to shine as Keegan Kolesar pounded in a short side rebounder from Stephanson to tie it up at the 11th minute mark.
The hometown Golden Knights came out to start the second period with some serious jam. They kept the visitors hemmed in for what seemed like forever. Desperate Leaf icings didn’t help. Morgan Reilly for example was on the ice for 2 minutes and 49 seconds. Vegas continued to press with 11 straight shots but Jack Cambell held the fort. Even after Jake Muzzin put it out over the glass, the ensuing power play did not help the home team.
Austin Mathews continued his dominance with his 23rd goal from Kase and Bunting. It was his 8th consecutive road game goal. Rasmus Sandin stood his opponent up with a perfectly timed shoulder check at the Leaf line. Ilya Mikaev tapped in a beauty off the backboard for his 4th from Wayne Simmonds. 3-1 Leafs after two.
William Karlsson, he of the $6m contract, scored his 5th goal of the season to start off the third stanza. That was followed by a power play goal by superstar Alex Pietrangelo to tie the game up at 3-3. Since the Leafs had only 17 shots on goal all game, the thought of coming back for a win in regulation was rather slim. An exciting 3 on 3 overtime (have you ever seen a dull one?) solved nothing. Save, Save, Save, Save and another Save left it to Nylander to close it out. Leafs 4 Vegas 3.
HOPPER NOTES: It was so obvious from the first period coverage that TSN had some serious audio challenges. At first, I thought that Gord and Ray were off site (COVID?) doing the call. The “international” sound didn’t match the coverage…is there a more boring story than Evander Kane getting a “second” chance ? What in the H E double hockey sticks is OZEMPIK and why should we care ? A very strong looking Canadian Women’s Olympic Hockey team was announced today…Nick Ritchie had some solid hits tonight…is there a bad NFL Playoff game this weekend ? Found it curious that the Leafs bench coaches were not wearing masks….Players I wish I had on my team – Alex Pietrangelo (over 30 minutes of ice time tonight…
Discuss – Cheers – Comments always welcome !