TWO ZEROES IN A ROW !

The Last time the LA Kings faced off against the Maple Leafs, Toronto was involved in a horrendous season-opening slump and just couldn’t get it going.  In fact, looking through my notes from October 29, I just scrawled across my notebook S-H-I-T !  A line from my game report that night read: “The Toronto Maple Leafs dropped back to 4-4-1 after another rather feeble loss…not be a complete cynic, but they were at this exact same record this time last year…a lot of no shows wore Leaf jerseys tonight”.  Boy, what a difference 6 weeks can make!

Since then, the Leafs have been on a 9-0-3 heater, supporting a 20 game point streak by Mitchell Marner in which they’ve been 12-2-6.  Ilya Samsonov got the start tonight despite Matt Murray’s brilliant 44 save shutout performance against Dallas on Tuesday and his 6-0-2 record to date supports his .941 save percentage.

 The Kings are a team on the rise (5^th in the west), with a good veteran/newbie mix and a cupboard full of prospects.  They seemed to be back on their heels to start the game and if not for some key swift saves by Jonathan Quick on a couple of Leaf power plays, the 0-0 score may have been quite different.  Nick Robertson got the bad side of a one-on-one play in the offensive corner and was out halfway through the first.

After outplaying the Kings and out shooting them 15-7 in the first, the Leafs exacted a little revenge scoring 3 goals in one minute and 6 seconds in the first half of the second.  Zach Ashton-Reese seemed to fire the Toronto squad uo with a clean mid ice hit, followed by the need to defend himself.  The ensuing power play, allowed Pierre Engvall to score his 4^th, followed by David Kamps’ 4^th and then William Nylander made it 3-0.  During all that, assists went to Timmins, Holmberg, Bunting and Kerfoot.  The home crowd was getting anxious for Marner’s streak and sure enough, off a fabulous shift in which he almost assisted from his butt, Mitchell slapped his bar down 7^th in 7 games to keep things going.  Justin Bieber loved it BTW.

Except for a stupid/selfish play at centre ice by Pierre Engvall which cost his team a 5 minute major, the LEAFS kept their impressive streak alive with a 5 zip win.  The other shoe dropped when Auston Matthews scored his 14^th  to make it so.  The Leafs played strong with only 10 forwards to finish the game and Samsonov polished it up with his 7^th career shutout.

 HOPPER NOTES:  Love it when TSN Starts the game on time (7:07) AFTER the anthems…TJ Brodie was back – love the guy – steady in limited action…Denis Malgin was in for SDA – look for Wayne Simmonds on Saturday…in case anyone was wondering, Marner’s 21 point streak is only 30 behind – you guessed it –  Wayne Gretzky…LA had an 11 for 20 pp rate going – wonder why they couldn’t score during that 5 minute major in the third ? …maybe that’s why they haven’t won 2 in a row in a month…poor #50 for the Kings, a hometown boy buys 200 tickets for his family and ends up getting booed for the entire third period (see Engvall)…cheers everyone – I like your comments, please post them on hopperonhockey.ca