In Toronto Sunday, the Maple Leafs’ Zach Hyman struck like lightning with just 34 seconds gone in the game to give the Leafs a 1-0 lead.
That was it.
Curtis McElhinney made 41 saves to backstop that goal to a 1-0 shutout of the visiting Edmonton Oilers.
“I felt great. The back-to-backs are always tough, sometimes there’s not a morning skate and you’re kind of left to your own devices,” McElhinney said. “I got a good skate in this morning by myself and things felt pretty good overall. It certainly has its challenges, but being here for almost a year now I’m pretty familiar with [getting the start on the second of back-to-back games]. I’ve kind of got the hang of it, I think.”
The Leafs improved to 20-10-1 and 11-3-1 in their last 15.
“It started by scoring first obviously,” Leafs head coach Mike Babcock said. “We knew we had to start on time, and we did. I thought our goaltender was real good, our penalty killing was outstanding. In the end, we spent too much time in our zone, but it was a big night on the back-to-back and a big win for us.”
The Oilers dropped to 12-16-2.
“I thought both times we played Toronto, we brought our A-games both times,” the Oilers’ Patrick Maroon said. “I’d say out of six periods, we won five. It’s one of those things, we can’t hang our heads. We have to find ways to bounce back against Columbus (on Tuesday).
“I thought the last two games, we did some really good things. This is a game I feel like we should have had it. We threw everything and the kitchen sink at them. Their goalie just made some good saves.”
[WATCH: All Oilers vs. Maple Leafs highlights]
Laurent Brossoit made 22 saves in taking the loss.
“The guys in this room believe. We’re not out of this thing yet. We’re far from out of it. We just have to win December. If we go into Christmas .500, this team is going to have some good success going forward. We can’t really think about what happened tonight,” Maroon said after the loss.
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