Toronto Maple Leafs Bend, Don’t Break In Home Opener
The Toronto Maple Leafs battled hard against the Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday night, on route to a 2-1 victory.
As the only saying goes, you can’t go 82-0 if you don’t win the first game, so the perfect season is still alive! Joking aside, the Toronto Maple Leafs battled through a sloppy first period and were able to come out on-top against their arch rivals.
There were a lot of questions leading up to the season opener.
How would the crowd look? Would the atmosphere be like it used to be? Would Mitch Marner play? Would there be any animosity after the Leafs lost in the playoffs?
Well to answer a few of those, the crowd looked amazing.
Being able to have fans in the building again was such a welcomed sight. For the past 20 months, besides a lucky 500 who were in attendance for Game 7 of the First Round last year, all Toronto Maple Leafs fans have been forced to watch from home.
Although I wasn’t personally in the building, you could feel the electricity in the building from home and it was amazing to see. Leafs crowds are typically quiet and more corporate but this crowd felt different. There was a buzz from start to finish and there were way more jerseys in the stands than previous years.
Toronto Maple Leafs Win Home Opener
After five minutes of play, it felt like the Leafs were going to lose this game 5-0. Montreal played so much better than Toronto to start, but it was Jack Campbell who saved the day.
Campbell made save-after-save and kept his team in it all night. If Toronto played like this and Freddie Andersen was in net, I promise you the Leafs wouldn’t have won this game. However, Campbell seems like the real deal.
As shown by his incredible record last year, the team believes in him and he believes in the team in front of him. I know it’s one game, but I expect big things from Campbell this year and the competition between him and Petr Mrazek will only help his play.
As the game progressed, an unlikely player scored the first Leafs goal of the season to tie it up. Pierre Engvall, who many expected to get cut last week, scored a great goal on the power-play and almost scored two more throughout the night.
The third line of Engvall, David Kampf and Ondrej Kase were working hard all night, as Kase led the team in shots with six shots on net last night.
When the game was all set and done it was obviously one of their core-four forwards that scored the game-winning goal to give the home team the win. William Nylander, who was on the ice for 8 shots for and only two against, ripped down the right wing and fired a brilliant shot over Jake Allen’s shoulder to give the Leafs a 2-1 lead.
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Overall, Toronto was sloppy defensively to start, but they battled back and deserved the win. It’ll be a big test for them against a hungry Ottawa Senators team tonight, so I wouldn’t be shocked if they lost, but let’s hope they can keep the winning streak alive in the Battle of Ontario.