In Toronto, the Montreal Canadiens’ Josh Anderson scored with 42 seconds gone in the game on Saturday, to give them a 1-0 lead.
Michael Bunting bookended a double around a single marker from Pierre Engvall as the Maple Leafs took a 3-1 lead in the first period, and added two more for a 5-1 win over the Canadiens.
Ryan O’Reilly picked up an assist in his first game with the Maple Leafs.
“It’s kind of like going into cold water, it’s better just to kind of jump headfirst than tip-toe into it,” O’Reilly said. “This was a little extreme in the sense of coming in here and taking off (to Chicago to play the Blackhawks on Sunday) right now, it was a little crazy, but I think it was the way to do it. I think the longer we waited, the more thinking creeps in and such, it’s better just to get here and start playing and let the hockey do it. It’s been great so far.”
Joseph Woll made 29 saves in the Toronto win, it was first win of the season.
“Pretty awesome, especially against Montreal on a Saturday night, it was pretty special,” Woll said. “I actually didn’t know about [the trade] until this morning when I was looking at our lineup chart and was like, ‘What happened to our lines?!’… I don’t have social media, so I live in the dark with that stuff, I literally had no idea.”
The Maple Leafs moved to 34-14-8.
“They came as advertised in terms of their personality, character, the way they fit in, two veteran players, very experienced and accomplished guys who fit in right away even though they’re the new guys here,” Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said. “They fit in really well and that was great to see for sure. That’s going to really help us.”
The Canadiens dropped to 23-29-4.
“Expectations are the same,” Montreal coach Martin St. Louis said. “It’s stay engaged, be engaged as a player and keep working on the things we’ve been talking about, building our brand so to speak about how we want to play. There’s things we’ve built throughout the season and just stay true to those.
“That’s what we focus on, that’s the level of expectation I have in terms of how we want to play. Are we going to win, I’m not sure, but it’s how you measure success in the situations we are in right now and it’s just keep building about how we want to look like.”
After a scoreless second period, William Nylander put the Maple Leafs up, 4-1, at 3:47.
David Kampf scored at 14:53 of the third to give Toronto the 5-1 final score.
“It wasn’t our best game tonight, but you have to give them credit,” Anderson said. “They came out hard, played a lot of offense in our end tonight. We had times to capitalize, a few 2-on-1’s but they capitalized on their chances. Like I said, we have to give them credit, they played well.”
Jake Allen made 36 saves in the loss.
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