In Toronto, William Nylander scored a power play goal in the second period to pull the Maple Leafs into a 2-2 tie with the Ottawa Senators on Friday. 
The Senators responded with two goals in the second, and two more in the third for a 6-2 win.
Brady Tkachuk hit for a double in the win.
“Everyone elevated tonight,” Tkachuk said. “Those are the games with a lot of emotion and a lot of energy, and I think our guys played a [heck] of a game.
“We’re starting to become that confident bunch that we’ve really faced a lot of adversity this year and I feel like we’re just turning in the right direction. We looked ourselves in the mirror and talked about how bad we wanted it. So, you’re seeing guys who are definitely elevating their game.”
Anton Forsberg made 31 saves in the Ottawa win.
The Senators improved to 22-23-3 off their second straight win
“I just thought we played with a lot of confidence,” coach D.J. Smith said. “I thought we did against the Islanders and it carried over tonight. Just made more plays, carried the puck, just a lot of good efforts.”
Ottawa’s Thomas Chabot , and the Maple Leafs’ Joey Anderson exchanged first period goal for a 1-1 tie.
Toronto dropped to 30-12-8.
“We played good in the first period, and then we just fell away from that,” Nylander said. “We didn’t win our battles and let them take over the game.
“For sure I think we took our foot off the gas. I mean, that’s unacceptable. So, we’ve got to work on that. That’s something we’ve got to improve on.”
Tkachuk’s first of the night gave the Sens a 2-1 lead 23 seconds into the middle frame.
After the Nylander goal, Derick Brassard and Drake Batherson scored in the second for a 4-2 advantage headed to the third period.
“You can’t lose like that on home ice,” Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said. “You can’t have a goalie who has been giving us absolutely everything and comes in in a tough spot and then you have a performance like that in front of him in the second and third period, you can’t have that. It should eat at us but we’ll forget about it because we practice tomorrow and then another game coming, and in a couple weeks’ time we won’t remember anything about this. But in the moment here, there are some things for us to learn about for sure.”
Tkachuk scored in the third period to expand the lead to 5-2 for Ottawa.
“It’s huge for us,” Tkachuk said. “To have that confidence, this is a top team the last bunch of years, so for us to be able to play our game and play a full 60 minutes, it’s something to build on.”
Claude Giroux added a marker at 14:53 for the 6-2 final.
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Ilya Samsonov made 28 saves in the Maple Leafs loss.
“I think you can look at the effort to a certain extent, you can look at execution, turnovers,” Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly said. “There’s lots of things that we didn’t do well tonight and lots of areas where we lost to them, not just on the score sheet. It’s an opportunity to learn from it. We’ve got two more [games] between now and the [All-Star] break, so we’ve got to make sure we get better and execute.”
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