In Toronto, Auston Matthews hit for a hat trick on Wednesday night, and the Maple Leafs routed the Colorado Avalanche, 8-3.
Jack Campbell made 28 saves in the Leafs win.
“It was just a really good effort from everybody,” Matthews said. “Our goaltending was unbelievable again. We were playing a really good team at the other end with a lot of really dangerous players and they were going to get their push and opportunities. At times we gave them a little too much space out there, but I thought defensively we did a pretty good job of keeping them to the outside.”
Toronto improved to 17-6-1, and are 15-2-0 in their 17 games.
“I liked our start for sure,” Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said. “We felt we needed to start quickly, and obviously playing with a lead is important always, but especially against this team. I don’t think this was an 8-3 game though, we played against a really good team that had some adversity before the game with their goaltending and I think we capitalized on that.”
Samuel Girard scored, and Nazem Kadri struck for two goals for the Avs, which just seemed to annoy the Maple Leafs.
“Just Auston being Auston,” Campbell said. “Just spectacular, and he does it at both sides of the rink. It’s great to see him get rewarded with three goals tonight. They’ve got a lot of great players over there, but as soon as they scored we kind of put our foot on the gas and did not give them much life.”
The Avs dropped to 11-7-1.
“We just didn’t play good enough tonight,” the Avalanche’s Gabriel Landeskog said. “When you get in a hole like that, it’s tough. We’ll come back strong tomorrow (at the Montreal Canadiens).”
William Nylander, Jason Spezza, and Matthews scored to give the Maple Leafs a 3-0 lead.
Travis Dermott and John Tavares scored for Toronto to make the score 5-2.
“Good preparation coming in, good mindset, and I just liked the way we came out with good energy coming off the West Coast trip,” Tavares said. “Sometimes that jet lag can linger around, and especially when we had good success, we still came in tonight with the right attitude and refocused.”
Matthews finished his hat trick to make it 7-2.
Pierre Engvall also scored for the Maple Leafs. a
Jonas Johansson made 33 saves in the Colorado loss.
“He wasn’t good,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said of Johansson. “Wasn’t good. Our habits in our game were not good to start and a lot of loop in our game. We were getting beat off the walls all over the place in our zone. Countless scoring chances against starting in the first period. So that’s just a determination by them and a lack of commitment by us.”
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