Whatever happened to the Philadelphia Flyers? Once a league powerhouse, perennial playoff contender and now suffering one their poorest (21-35-7) seasons of all. GM ChuckFletcher has a lot of splainin’ to do over the summer months.
The Toronto Maple Leafs, as always, needed to guard against playing “down” to tonight’s competition (see last week in Montreal). Jack Campbell was back between the pipes, Ilya Lyubushkin was back beside Morgan Reilly and newly signed Harvard grad (# 26) Nick Abruzzese made his debut on the 4th line alongside fellow Alum Colin Blackwell and just for good measure, veteran protector Wayne Simmonds. That meant Spezza and Clifford had press box duty. Soup made a couple of solid saves to keep his team at zeroes despite being outshot 11-6 in the opening stanza.
A pretty pedestrian first period led to real solid effort from both sides in the second. Kevin Hayes broke the goose egg @ 3:56 after some poor Leaf zone d coverage. Former Philly favorite Simmonds scored on a beauty lead pass from TJ Brodie to tie things up – his first goal in 32 games. To pile on, Timothy Liljgren scored his third off a goalmouth scramble with help from d partner Giordano. Ivan Properev, himself on a long goal scoring slump, got things back to even before the final buzzer. Of note, Coach Keefe doing his juggling routine with his forward combos in the back half. Example: Tavares with Marner and Mikaev and Mathews with Kerfoot and Bunting.
Keefe re-united his “traditional” lines for the third and it paid off. A dipsy doodlin’ Marner fed Mathews for his 51st. The Leafs shorthanded dominance was fulfilled as Pierre Engvall scored his 12th, which also happened to be the Toronto squad’s 12 shorty of this campaign. Ivan Proporov continued his strong night converting his third point of the night 4-3. Morgan Reilly and John Tavares topped the night off for the Leafs on a good (if late) team win. As an extra measure, Wayne Simmonds finally got in is bout with McKewan after a cheap shot on Lyubushkin. No Contest.
HOPPER NOTES: Sad to see Keith Yandles’ Iron Man streak of 689 consecutive NHL games played end tonight…I know the Flyers are re-building and need to look at prospects, but c’mon…tonight was the Leafs 44th win and 93rd point of the season…Michael Bunting, that lovable agitate, had been held off the scoresheet for 11 games, but his assist in the third got him off the shcnide…nice return game for Jack Campbell with 25 saves, some of which were of the spectacular variety… Monday in Tampa – Tuesday in Florida – who do you start – discuss !
Cheers – being 3 is pretty cool Mayari – can’t wait to see you tomorrow !!
They needed to come away with two points tonight.
Two tough games coming up.
I think if they take one of them we will be happy.
I would start Soup on Monday..Kallgren on Tuesday..
Would prefer Soup go back to back because they need him playoff ready but not sure they would do that.
It is so cool what Matthews and Marner are accomplishing but it is all meaningless if they get shutdown in the playoffs,
It is too bad the season is tainted by poor playoff performances but it is.