The Toronto Maple Leafs escaped the the concept of a two straight losses t the Ottawa Senators at home on Wednesday night.
Alexander Kerfoot scored at 10:46 of the third period to snap a 1-1 tie and sent the Leafs to a relieving 2-1 win over the Sens.
“This was a huge win for us bouncing back from a tough loss the other day,” Kerfoot said. “It’s really big in a shortened season like this to stop that negative momentum. You don’t want to let that creep into your minds or your game, so coming right back out and winning a game in which I think Ottawa played a good game, didn’t give us much. That was a big win for us.”
Frederik Andersen made 27 saves in the win.
“He’s just so composed in there all the time,” Auston Matthews said, “Tonight early on, when we needed some saves, he came through with some big saves for us and kept it a 0-0 game. He does that on a nightly basis for us.”
Brady Tkachuk scored the Senators’ only goal.
“Very good (road) game, I thought the chances were probably even,” Senators head coach D.J Smith said. “We got into some penalty trouble and we didn’t make some plays in the third period we should have made. And then we got hemmed in our zone. I thought we did a lot of great things. I thought we broke the puck out well. We skated. We had our chances. Maybe it’s 2-1 on the night but it could go either way.”
Matthews pushed his point streak to 14 games with a goal.
“I really liked our second and third periods,” Matthews said. “We had a lot of space (on Monday) flying through the neutral zone and today they did a much better job of clogging stuff up and making it difficult on you. In the first they did a good job, but we responded well in the second and third.”
Joe Thornton hit the twines twice in the game, and neither counted.
“There’s probably two or three guys I’ve played with that could do what he (Matthews) does, but he’s on another level,” Thornton said. “He just competes so hard. I think he should be up for Selke, Hart, Rocket Richard Trophies. He just does so many things and just plays the game the right way. I really enjoy watching him and playing alongside him. He’s the complete package.”
Matt Murray made 26 saves in the hard luck loss.
“That’s a game that could have gone either way against a very good team, so I was proud of that effort,” Murray said.
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