The sweep of the NHL starts in Toronto where the Maple Leafs’ Ben Smith scored his first goal of the season to help the Leafs beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 4-1.
“This is my ninth game with Toronto and to finally put one in the net felt good,” Smith said. “It was probably one of my worst couple of games here as a Leaf. Overall, there were a lot of things I could have done better, but offensively it was my best game.”
Connor Carrick also scored for the Leafs.
“How many times are we going to talk about the inconsistency of our game?” Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said. “It’s frustrating. It shouldn’t matter who you are playing; give an effort. The first two periods we had 11 shots on net. That’s not going to win you hockey games. We have to be better. You have to generate from both side of the puck, from defense to the offense. We’re not doing either.
“We had some good chances in the third, but we had a breakdown that led to a Toronto goal. I don’t care who you are playing; this is a competitive league and teams are going to take advantage of your mistakes. They did that tonight. We shot ourselves in the foot with the way we came out.”
Zach Hyman and PA Parenteau each had empty-net goals to seal it for Toronto.
“I just think Smitty is a pretty dependable guy and he might be right about it not being his best game, but he’s an honest player and he’s a guy you trust because he does it right each and every night,” Leafs coach Mike Babcock said. “He’s a work guy, a common sense guy and he tries hard. He has been excellent for us.”
In San Jose, Joonas Donskoi scored a power play goal early in the third period to help the Sharks defeat the Boston Bruins, 3-2.
“These are good tests for us,” Sharks center Joe Thornton said. “Saturday night, they’re one of the best in the East, and these guys are one of the best in the East. It’s a good measuring stick for us, and we like the way we’re playing. We like our home game again too. Everything’s starting to come together nicely.”
James Reimer made 21 saves for the win including a late game stop to preserve the win.
“You’re just trying to get something on the puck,” Reimer said of his last-second heroics. “I thought we battled hard, played a really good game. The power play came through in the third and we held on. I thought we limited a lot of their chances. I just tried to be there on the very few times they got through.”
David Krejci and Loui Eriksson scored for the Bruins and Tuukka Rask made 24 saves in the loss.
“It was frustrating,” Eriksson said. “We had some really good scoring chances to tie the game back up. They made some big saves.”
Melker Karlsson and Brent Burns scored for the Sharks.
“We have a bitter feeling right now because we don’t like to lose,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “We had a couple of breakdowns here and there. We had a chance to tie it there late, with that breakaway. [Krug] had a great scoring chance there in the slot. We had a few high quality chances.
“We want some points out of this road trip. We have to clean up a couple of things and we’ll be okay. We had a 2-1 lead and then they came back. They had four power plays. We just had a single power play there. We struggled to get those. We know what our power play can do.”
In Ottawa, the Senators’ Erik Karlsson scored with just over 30 seconds left in extra time to give them a 3-2 win over the Minnesota Wild.
“We’re going to try and win every single game that we have left. That’s the mentality we’re going to have in here,” Karlsson said. “There’s not a second that we’re not going to try and play our best, not work our hardest. At the end of the day, we’re going to be where we are. It’s not going to be because of these last 11 games here. We just have to play the games, play hard, play for each other, and at the end of the year show that we still care in here.”
Mika Zibanejad had forced the extra session with a goal with just seven seconds left in regulation.
“We played a great 59 minutes and 50 seconds, the team just committed to playing defense, and then we let up for nine seconds,” Wild coach John Torchetti said. “We’ve got to do a better job of collapsing on that play.”
Nino Niederreiter and Ryan Carter scored for Minnesota.
“We were lucky we got the extra point,” Torchetti said. “Some nights like that, you don’t get that extra point and you play a great game. We battled hard. We can learn a lot from that game. We should have won 2-1. Now we’re on to [play the New Jersey Devils on Thursday]. The game in hand, we got a point, so we’re a point up and we just move from there.”
Craig Anderson made 23 saves for the win and Devan Dubnyk took the loss on 17 saves.
“I really like the way we played, the way we stuck with it. That’s been our challenge,” Senators coach Dave Cameron said. “We didn’t get frustrated tonight after we got behind early. We were playing real well, they got a redirect goal, but we stayed with it. Shut that team down and found a way to win.
“Anything they got tonight, they had to earn. They had to come through us to earn.”
Mike Hoffman also scored for the Sens.
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