The Toronto Maple Leafs visited the Utah Hockey Club Friday night, and thanks to another fantastic performance from superstar Mitch Marner, they won their sixth game in a row without Captain Auston Matthews.
The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated Utah 3-2 on Sunday night in a hard-fought, overall fantastic game in which they were the superior team and the Nylander Brothers made their first appearance as a tandem.
The Leafs started Joseph Woll who earned the start on the strength of a shutout Wednesday against Las Vegas, and he did not disappoint.
The Leafs have ridden what is pretty much the best goaltending in the NHL so far this year to a first place spot in the Atlantic, and with the win on Sunday they increased their lead to 3 points over the Florida Panthers.
Toronto Maple Leafs win as Mitch Marner extends his MVP run.
On Sunday, the Leafs were by much the better team, with Mitch Marner standing out as the finest player on the ice. Marner had two goals, one on the power play, and a staggering 78% Expected Goals rating. It is extremely insane that he is not signed, regardless of his terrible responses on “the Quiz”.
Marner now has multi-point games in 7 of the last 8 games, and is 13th in NHL scoring with 28 points, only seven points back of the league lead. Since the start of November he’s only scored 2 points less than Connor McDavid, who leads the NHL in that time.
Marner’s scoring is decieving because the Leafs basically didn’t score at all on the power-play for the first month and a half of the season, and he’s scoring at the lowest 5v5 rate of his career since his sophomore season. The recent two-points-per-game scoring can’t be sustained, but Marner could still reasonably make a run for the Art Ross once Matthews is back and once he starts scoring at a better 5v5 rate.
The Leafs did score a power-play goal tonight, but they could have put the game to bed by scoring on a very long two-man advantage in the second period. When they didn’t score, Utah was able to climb back into the game and make it close, but still, the scoreboard makes this game seem closer than it was.
The Minten, Grebenkin, and Alex Nylander line saw little time, although Minten did get on the power play and nearly scored, while the snake-bitten Robertson had a couple chances and didn’t look terrible at all. (stats from naturalstattrick.com).
The Leafs didn’t have any poor players last night, but OEL/Rielly was rather disappointing overall, and it’s becoming evident beyond a doubt that OEL isn’t cut out for top-four minutes at this stage of his career. His hot start is fading, and he’s not doing well as Rielly’s partner.
