The Toronto Maple Leafs improved their Week of Doom record to 2-0-0 with an unlikely 5-4 shootout victory over the Washington Capitals. How often do the Leafs rattle off the third period goals on the road against one of the best home teams in the NHL? Well, this is the second time this year. This was a fun game to re-live through highlights but I'm sure it was harder to sit and watch all sixty minutes. I managed to listen to the overtime and shootout on my drive home. I don't think everyone else was listening because I was fist pumping and honking and all I got were birds flipped at me.
Cam Charron put the game's ups and downs into graphical form. Pretty neat. Chemmy was pretty despondent at 4-1:
@felixpotvin @garrettbauman who cares? They aren't scoring three more.
Thankfully, NostraChemmy did not strike again as Mikhail Grabovski and the Leafs refused to go softly into the night. He started the rally with a goal early in the third and finished it with a brilliant pass to a wide open Clarke MacArthur at the side of the net. That makes two games in a row where the Leafs have tied it up with their goalie on the bench. Then, in the shootout, he made kind of a nice move:
More after the jump including full highlights.
Corsi and Fenwick | EV Face-Offs | H2H Time On Ice
Game Summary | Event Summary | Jaspers' Rink Recap
Odds and sods from the game:
- Mike Komisarek only played 9 minutes. Ruh roh.
- Nazem Kadri played 18 minutes including four on the powerplay. He played the majority of his even strength minutes with Tyler Bozak. He made a hell of a pass to Tomas Kaberle to help set up the 4-3 goal.
- The Mikhail Grabovski - ClarkeMacArthur - Nikolai Kulemin line had three goals, three assists and was plus six. No big deal.
- The player most often out against that line? Defensive juggernaut Mike Green. Whoops.
- The Leafs got nuked in the face-off circle. 57-43 is terrible.
- Francois Beauchemin and Keith Aulie drew the Alexander Ovechkin assignment. Aulie told AM640 that his confidence was soaring after the Bruins game because of the responsibility he was handed. How did he look tonight?
- The Capitals might have struggled because they were not sure who they were playing.
- The Beauchemin, Aulie pairing got dummied in Corsi. Also getting fed: Tyler Bozak, Fredrik Sjostrom and Kris Versteeg.