In Toronto, the Maple Leafs fell behind, 2-1, to the visiting Vancouver Canucks in the first period, then reeled off four unanswered goals in a 5-2 win on Saturday night.
William Nylander hit for a goal in the win to extend his point streak to 15 games.
“He’s a man on a mission,” Toronto forward Bobby McMann said. “That goal today, he just wasn’t going to be stopped. He finds a way to put it in. It is fun to watch.”
Ilya Samsonov made 31 saves in the win.
“I thought he was solid,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said. “Gives up a couple there in the first period and that can get in your head, but he didn’t allow it to. I also thought the guys took really good care of him. At 5-on-5, we gave up very little tonight and we’ve been talking about trending in a good direction. It seems like almost every game we are setting a new standard for our play defensively.”
J.T. Miller and Pius Suter scored for the Canucks in the opening stanza, their goals were wrapped around a strike by Matthew Knies for the 2-1 score after 20 minutes.
“We have to be careful,” Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet said. “If things are slipping in our game, we’ve got to address it as a group. I thought the last few games there’s pockets of the game where I think teams are outworking us. We’ve got to play desperate hockey, too. You have to match the level your opponent. Like I said, it’s 82 games. There’s some stinkers and sometimes you learn from a stinker.”
Vancouver dropped to 10-3-1.
Nylander tied the game, 2-2, at 4:53 of the second.
The Leafs took a 3-2 lead at 14:22 of the middle frame on a strike by Noah Gregor.
Toronto extended the lead to 4-2 at 4:56 on a marker fro Nicholas Robertson .
“Oh, that was a great play,” Robertson said. “I was coming off the bench and just seeing where the puck went, and it was right in front of me, so all I had to do was shoot it, and luckily it went in.”
“You have to give Toronto credit,” Tocchet said. “They were the more desperate team that played well. They deserve the game, quite frankly.”
Midway through the third, the Leafs added insurance on a goal from David Kampf for the 5-2 final.
Thatcher Demko made 17 saves in the loss.
“Well, the power play did a good job of getting momentum for us in the first and then it did the exact opposite for us after that,” Miller said of Vancouver, which went 2-for-6 with the man-advantage. “From that point on, they seemed to take over the game just a little bit. Starts with me. I lost three face-offs in a row to get the advantage.”
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