In Toronto, William Nylander scored 65 seconds into overtime on Friday night to end a tight defensive game wit the Minnesota Wild, to give the Maple Leafs a 2-1 win.
“I put it under the glove,” Nylander said. “I was trying to go high, but it went under, so I’ll take it.
“I knew there was a forward there (Boldy), so I just tried to take it to the net and I saw he was kind of flat-footed there, so it was going to be hard if I came in with some speed.”
The Maple Leafs improved to 36-15-8.
“A lot of our forwards have that quality where they can strip guys of pucks, and I think ‘Willie’ is one of the best in the League at it,” Toronto’s Mark Giordano said. “You’re never safe around him when he’s behind you like that, and the move to the net was pretty incredible.”
Ilya Samsonov made 24 saves in the Maple Leafs win.
“I liked how we played just as disciplined a game,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said. “That’s an elite defensive team. They play really hard, really adhere to their structure and tonight they were really dialed in in that area.”
All the regulation scoring came in the first period when the Wild took a 1-0 lead on a goal from Brandon Duhaime .
“We liked every part of our game here tonight except missing one point,” Minnesota coach Dean Evason said. “That was a fantastic individual play (by Nylander). Gaudreau makes a great play himself getting stick on puck, but they do that a lot, they do a lot of stripping from behind. Their sticks are real good. Two inches up and it’s a hook, but it wasn’t, it was not on his hand, it was just on his stick. A very skilled play by a skilled player, and then a good play to beat a forward playing defense and then he makes a great move as well.”
The Maple Leafs tied it on a marker form David Kampf .
“It was a good game,” Nylander said. “These are the kind of games that are going to be coming down the line here, so we’ve got to win these kind of games. It’s more like playoff hockey, so it was good for us.
The the Wild dropped to 32-21-6.
“I think just we played as a team, we played hard,” Wild defenseman Alex Goligoski said. “I thought we had a great effort tonight. We very easily could have won that game. If we have efforts like that the rest of the way, we’re going to be just fine.”
Filip Gustavsson made 22 saves in the loss.
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