There wasn’t really much to choose between tonight’s combatants from Toronto and St. Louis. Both clubs are top 10 offensively and defensively, they both have 49 points although the Leafs have 2 games in hand and 1 more win and both have been rather on a roll lately with the Blues winning 10 of their last 13 and Toronto 5 of 7.
What Leafs Nation was looking for was a bounce back from that horrific outing in the dessert and watching Mitchell Marner’s return to see how he could help Austin Mathews score in his 10th straight road game. The Blues still have some of their old standbys: Victor Taresenko, Ryan O’Reilly, Robert Thomas, Jordan Binnington and Coach Craig Berube from that 2019 Cup team and made the significant addition of Tory Krug to replace the departed Alex Pietrangelo.
I guess that “playing down to your opponent” saying is true. You’d be hard pressed to compare tonight’s Toronto Maple Leafs team to the one from the other night in Arizona. Similar to their strong showings in Colorado and Las Vegas, the LEAFS came out flying despite going down 1-0 on a clever give and go to O’Reilly at the 4 minute mark.
But just 1:45 later Michael Bunting got his first goal in 10 from Mathews and Morgan Reilly (his 30th point of the season). And then, another 1:49 later, Marner pulled a slick O-Zone steal to pot his first goal since November to put the Leafs in the lead. As if that wasn’t enough, John Tavares who has been a little sleepy the last couple of games roofed another to give some insurance from Kerfoot (his 20th A). Coach Berube immediately called a timeout to settle his squad.
A little nastiness resulted from some “tit for tat” hits creating a spirited 4 on 4 to set the stage for what would be an interesting second stanza.
As predicted, both teams came out firing, but as proven throughout the season the second is the St Louis Blues strongest period. They tied the game up in the first 5 minutes on goals by O’Reilly and Brandon Saad. They were well on their way to taking the lead with another goalmouth assault when the Leafs finally got a whistle. This prompted Coach Keefe to take his turn at a timeout to settle his squad.
Not long after, the David Kampf line with Pierre Engvall and Mikahev put on a dazzling display of high pressure forechecking which led to Timothy Liligren’s first goal as an NHLer in his 34th game. The Blues All-Star candidate is 23 year old Jordan Kyrou. He’s had 37 points in 33 games. He shovelled a lovely back door feed to linemate Mike Thomas to tie the game up at fours at 16:13.
The Blues showed their grit with a slam dunk rebound to take the lead less than 3 minutes in. Unlike recent 3rd period collapses the LEAFS kept plugging away with a PP goal from (who else?) Austin Mathews. This was his 10th road game goal in a row and his 25th overall on the season. Lady luck shone down on the visitors tonight as a “cheap ass” goal line tally from Mickaev snuck in for the winning goal with only 3:15 to go. WOW – what great Hockey game !
HOPPER NOTES: The Blues are well worth the prize of admission. Their somewhat depleted line-up had Parenko and Taresenko out – at full strength they could well be back to challenging for the Stanley Cup this June. Guys I’d like on my team – #77 Niko Mikkola…final SOG 40-25 Leafs…I like Garry Gailey as a colour analyst…Liligren was out there in the last minute on two occasions !
Discuss – Cheers – Comments always welcome !