-The travesty that is the Toronto Maple Leafs vs Detroit Red Wings not being the main game on Hockey Night in Canada. No, we’re greeted with the lowest of the low, the bottom feeding flounders of the NHL on TV.

Blame goes to Sportsnet for their questionable programming decisions.

Blame goes to the Detroit Pistons for playing a losing game earlier in the day pushing this game back half an hour.

Blame goes to everyone who is not the Maple Leafs, because they are practically perfect in everyway.

Such as, this start! It’s great! the Leafs are controlling play, coming close with shots, and denying the Red Wings any chance at a goal for the first few minutes.

Heck, the Leafs go up 7-0 in shots in four minutes, when they take a break to celebrate a William Nylander goal!

1-0 Toronto Maple Leafs!

Nylander then leaves the bench to head back to the room. A bugs been going around the team this week. The Detroit Red Wings get a shot after the face off, so Michael Bunting gets offended by that and scores his 18th of the season, to put him back on top of rookie goals.

2-0 Toronto Maple Leafs!

Nick Robertson was just called up from the Toronto Marlies, and he’s determined to get a goal tonight. He hasn’t score his first regular season goal yet, after getting injured six games into last season. He did score his first NHL goal in the 2020 qualifying round against Columbus way back when.

The Detroit Red Wings decide to play some hockey and Lucas Raymond gets his stick on a rebound and scores his 40th point to go on top of the rookie points race.

2-1 Toronto Maple Leafs.

This is offensive to me, and the Maple Leafs, so the Leafs go and score a third goal after David Kämpf tips in a high shot.

3-1 Toronto Maple Leafs!

This goal chases starter Alex Nedeljkovic after just over ten minutes, and Tomas Griess takes the net, and makes a save! Hooray goes the crowd!

Boo, go I as John Tavares is called for tripping Filip Zadina. It was a fine call, I guess.

The Maple Leafs slow it down a little bit for the rest of the first period. They don’t give up, or ease up, but they don’t go as hard as they could. Taking it easy on the poor Red Wings. They come close a few more times, but the period ends at 3-1 for Toronto.

The second period starts and Mitch Marner scores!

The Red Wings did get a shot off first, but did it go in? No. They almost never do.

4-1 Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Leafs aren’t all goal scoring, they’re putting in the work to get ahead of the Red Wings at every turn, keeping chances to a bare miniumum

Hey look!

5-1 Toronto Maple Leafs.

Nick Robertson gets a little eager to impress in his game tonight, playing like a puppy out there, and gets a little out of control when he boards Moritz Seider to give the Red Wings their first power play opportunity of the game.

The Maple Leafs penalty kill is doing it’s job very well, keeping the Red Wings to the perimeter of their zone, dumping the puck out and shots are near worthless. No goal for Detroit.

BUT! Mitch Marner scores his first career hat trick - all goals in 7:46 of the second period, a natural hatty - and puts the Maple Leafs up 6-1

SIX TO ONE MAPLE LEAFS!

Oh my god, it’s only halfway through the game.

The Red Wings are getting grumpy. When Ilya Lyubushkin defends Jack Campbell after a Wing gets tangled up with him and a scrum ensues. No penalties, but the Leafs come out on top.

Jack Campbell gets caught out behind his net, and the Red Wings take advantage. 6-2 Toronto.

The Red Wings have taken some more charge in the second, gotten closer to maybe scoring half as many goals as the Leafs have, and as we get close to the final minute of the second period, Auston Matthews decides it’s his turn to score.

7-1 Toronto Maple Leafs.

With 20 minutes to go Mitch Marner has five points - 3G, 2A - the question to ask, is can he break Darryl Sittlers 10 point record?

The Red Wings seemed to have swapped out the team from the first two periods for a different one, as they score two quick goals to open the third period.

7-4 Toronto.

The Red Wings take control of the game, and it gets even closer when Joe Veleno shoots  quick but past Campbell, and it goes right out. The Red Wings have chased Campbell from the net.

7-5 Toronto.

What the fuck?

7-6 Toronto.

These teams must have had a Freaky Friday moment during intermission, the Red Wings are running roughshod over the Maple Leafs now, making power play passes, and they even put Nedeljkovic back in net! They’ve restarted the game in the third and the ice is tilted in Detroits favour.

Ilya Mikheyev does his part and scores to make it 8-6 Toronto.

Ned waves for a replay about goaltender interference, but the Red Wings don’t challenge the goal. They may have had a case, but losing would give the Leafs a power play and that could be dangerous. It would give the Leafs back control of the game.

That plan worked as some dipshit Red Wing scores, and makes it 8-7 Toronto.

That dipshit was Lucas Raymond who gets a hat trick of his own.

In a battle in front of the Red Wings net, Mitch Marner springs the puck lose but gets called for tripping in the process. Will Detroit take advantage?

Ondřej Kaše does. He and David Kämpf come in hard on the Detroit net and a great cross-crease pass gets to Ondřej Kaše and he scores the Leafs ninth goal of the game.

9-7 Maple Leafs, thanks to a couple childhood friends.

No PP goal for Detroit BTW.

Michael Bunting gets a break away opportunity, and while he doesn’t score, Mitch Marner is following him wand gets the rebound to get his fourth goal of the game.

10-7 Toronto.

Tonight we are watching the highest paid, most expensive, most talented beer league game ever played.

No more goals after this one sadly, not for lack of trying.

Final Score: 10-7.

This was a weird goddamn game. It was actually two games. 40 minutes of the Maple Leafs dominating the game, then 20 of all out chaos.

I was disappointed Nick Robertson didn’t manage to get one in there, I’m sure he is too, but hell more than enough Leafs scored tonight. The goalies were off and on, even when the Leafs had a big lead, Jack wasn’t at his best. There are lessons to be learned from this game, please do not ask me what they were.

The next Leafs game is Monday night in Washington against the Capitals. Thank goodness this game isn’t being followed up by one against the Wild.

Game Coverage