Lost in a bad game where the Leafs collectively let in seven goals was Connor Brown's 13th game in the NHL. A closer look reveals a young player who was given an opportunity and made the most of it.

Brown played only seven games last year in his brief call up, unlike William Nylander, who was played enough to burn a year of his ELC and cement his place in the regular lineup.  Brown, like Kasperi Kapanen, was just there to give the coaches a look at him.

Brown did his tour with Tyler Bozak on one of two top lines, sometimes with Nylander. They played some carefully arranged minutes in home games as Mike Babcock matched them up to give them the best possible chance to succeed early.

Things were so different then, late in the season after the trade deadline. Teams were tired, full of injured players, and they often showed the Leafs their backup goalies while they played only as hard as they needed to to beat a team flirting with last place.

One day in March, the Leafs went to Tampa and played the playoff-bound Lightning.  Ben Bishop started that game, and he made 34 saves for his 16th career shutout while the Leafs owned the Lightning on the Corsi chart.  The Lightning won it 3-0.

They couldn't score, those Leafs.

Brown played mostly up against Matt Carle and Braydon Coburn, and he had decent results.  He even fared well against Steven Stamkos.  Viktor Hedman was a brick wall, however, and Tyler Johnson was a tougher assignment.

That was then.  Brown went back to the Marlies a few days later and finished out his season in the playoffs there.

This year, Brown began the season, despite his waiver exemption, on the Leafs' roster.  He played his first five games on the fourth line with Peter Holland and Matt Martin. Life was very different there compared to the Bozak line, where Babcock still tries to create as favourable a matchup as he can.

Last year Brown's unadjusted, all-situations Corsi For percentage at five-on-five was 53.1, and this year it is 49.6. That's a total difference of six fewer shots for and three more against, so we can all take this as a lesson in how we sometimes infer greater meaning in percentages for small numbers of shots than is really there.   Brown is generally a good possession player.

The move from playing the fourth-line grind to Kadri's shutdown line is not as big a leap as the switch from Bozak's line last year onto that fourth line.  Kadri plays a lot of tough matchups, particularly in home games.

When you play the Lightning, a tough matchup doesn't just mean Stamkos, so Kadri's assignment in Tuesday's loss to the Lightning was Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat and Jonathan Drouin.  In general, Kadri faces the second pairing defenders more, with Auston Matthews seeing the top pairing.  That held true for this game as well.

Connor Brown had a Score and Venue Adjusted CF% of 56.29.  (The Leafs trailed for nearly the whole game, so looking at score adjusted numbers will lessen that inflation effect on their numbers.)

This time, the defenders Brown saw were mostly Nikita Nesterov (a very good defender at shot differentials who struggles with some execution) and Anton Stralman, as well as Braydon Coburn and Jason Garrison.

Brown had positive shot differentials against all of those defenders, the Johnson line and everyone else he faced except for three minutes of Stammer time.  He also managed to be even against Hedman's brick wall.

The eye-test says that Kadri's line were the most proficient all over the ice at executing good, basic hockey, generating chances and not giving up easy "empty-net" goals—what Babcock calls plays when the Leafs do something so bad, no goalie can help them.  They also had 100% of the High-Danger Scoring Chances while they were on the ice and over 50% of the Scoring Chances.  They shut Tyler Johnson's line out of the game almost completely.

Brown, in his lucky 13th game, outplayed not just Johnson and friends, but last year's Connor Brown.  And he did it against a happy and healthy Tampa Bay Lightning team at the peak of their conditioning.

Brown has played good, solid hockey in the OHL and the AHL, and he is starting out very well in his first NHL season.  He might be overshadowed by a trio of younger rookies, but he has a proven ability to grab and hold the attention of coaches who like a guy with a good two-way game to complement the flash and dazzle.

That’s what Brown did for you in his first game on the top line, we’ll have to wait and see how his whole season plays out.

Data is from Natural Stat Trick and Hockey Reference.