In Toronto, the Maple Leafs got two goals form Mitchell Marner in a 3-1 win over the visiting Winnipeg Jets on Monday night.
“We’ve got to be ready to play in tight games,” Marner said. “Every game we’ve played has been close, so we just want to make sure we keep doing the right things and playing the right way.”
Frederik Andersen made 27 saves to get the win.
“Speed, breaking out of the zone quickly, finding easy exits, we were really communicating a lot and controlling the puck in the offensive zone,” Marner said. “When they were exiting, they seemed fatigued and couldn’t really forecheck our defense that much. We’ve talked about wanting to get better at that every game, and I thought in the second period we really took over and did that well.”
Kyle Connor was the only goal scorer for the Jets.
“It wasn’t our best period of hockey,” Connor said. “I think all night we were kind of looking for it. It’s a good thing about the NHL, we’ve got a game back to back, so we’ll kind of forget about that one. For as bad as we played, we were only down one goal going into the third period. I thought we put up a good fight in the third.”
John Tavares added a single marker for the Leafs.
“I think he’s (Tavares) skating really well, he looks really confident with the puck,” Keefe said. “He looks quicker to me than he did at any point last season. He’s got a little extra step whether that’s on the rush, coming out of the corners in the offensive zone to attack the net or coming back into our zone. He looks to me like he’s got an extra step this season, and that’s serving our team very well.”
The dropped to 1-1-0 on the season.
“Obviously you need that goal, that tying goal, and it didn’t happen for us, so you’d be left thinking that our power play didn’t get it done,” Jets head coach Paul Maurice said. “But that wouldn’t be the story of the game. I won’t assess it as what caused the loss.”
Connor Hellebuyck made 35 saves in the loss.
You must be logged in to post a comment.