The Maple Leafs lost their first game of the season 4-3 to the Montreal Canadiens last night, in what was not in any way the kind of skilled game we would expect. Here’s our full recap of last night’s game:

Game 1 Recap: Maple Leafs lose a frustrating game 4-3

Post-game, Sheldon Keefe noted it was “early season sloppiness” and he didn’t expect that. “With everything our team has been through together, that’s unacceptable.” Morgan Rielly echoed those comments noting they had been “training all summer” and they came out of the gate like they had taken the whole summer off.

It was a really rancid opening game, but there’s no time to think about all that went wrong as they are back in action again tonight in Toronto against the Washington Capitals.

We know that Ilya Samsonov will make his debut in net for the Leafs tonight, playing against his old team. It will be interesting to see if there are any other immediate adjustments to be made in response to last night. Morning skate will probably be around 11:00, and we’ll have our full preview of tonight’s game after that.

One final, sad note of Leafs news before we get to the rest of the league:

Other News

Well the Leafs certainly didn’t have the worst first game of the new NHL season. That honour goes to the Columbus Blue Jackets who after making their huge off-season coup in getting free-agent Johnny Gaudreau to sign there—the biggest free agent signing Columbus has had in its history—things went right off the rails in their first game.

It started with their one other star, Patrik Laine, getting injured and removed from the rest of the game for medical treatment.

Word is there is an injury is to his arm, but how bad isn’t known yet.

Things went from bad to ugly for Columbus, with the Jackets losing 4-1. Check out the 5v5 Corsi-Against here, note for emphasis again, this is 5v5 only, no penalty killing included here:

Yes, you are reading that correctly. While Erik Gudbranson was on the ice at even-strength the Carolina Hurricanes got off 44 shot attempts! A now the obligatory reminder that the Blue Jackets signed him to a four year contract paying him $4 million per year.

Meanwhile, Darnell Nurse did this with one second left in the period and may be the first player to get a call from the Department of Player Safety this season.

The news digitally super-imposed ads on the boards appeared in all the NHL games on TV last night. Looks like they must be using the Rogers 5G Network to do it. You can “experience the Rogers 5G network” watching this clip.

And the Colorado Avalanche raised their Stanley Cup banner.

What will we see from Samsonov tonight?

He’ll show himself as a candidate for the starters job.83
He’ll win the starters job outright with this game.17
Fact: there are never good outcomes with respect to Leafs goalies.150
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