Summary
The weight of defeats is accumulating among the Canadiens players, but head coach Martin St-Louis still believes that his group is close to turning things around.
Mitch Marner and William Nylander each had a goal and an assist and the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Montreal hockey club 4-1 on Saturday night at Scotiabank Arena.
The Habs thus suffered a sixth consecutive loss (0-5-1).
Most of the Canadiens players gave an honorable effort, but a few games turned into a comedy of errors, or horror, and the Maple Leafs took advantage.
“No one is happy with the results we have,” said forward Kirby Dach. We are a group of 23 players going through this together. It’s the same group that will have to get by. We can’t trust anyone but ourselves for that. We have to work together. »
The Maple Leafs also won the special teams battle, en route to a third victory in a row.
“I liked our intentions and our volume on offense. We spent a lot of time in the offensive zone, said St-Louis. We often missed the net. We gave away two goals on their power play and one when they were shorthanded. But five against five, I didn’t hate our match. »
Brendan Gallagher scored for the Canadian (4-9-2), who suffered a sixth loss in a row (0-5-1). Samuel Montembeault made 23 saves.
Conor Timmins and John Tavares also scored for the Maple Leafs (9-5-2), who won a third straight game. Joseph Woll stopped 21 shots.
The Maple Leafs were without star forward Auston Matthews for a third straight game.
They also lost Max Pacioretty late in the first period to what appeared to be a left leg injury.
The Canadian will play his next game Monday against the Sabers in Buffalo. The meeting will begin at 12:30 p.m.
When things go bad…
The visitors had the best chances to score at the start of the match. However, the Canadian players often lacked precision.
Nick Suzuki missed the target following a delivery from Mike Matheson. Josh Anderson was also inaccurate on a shot from the slot.
The Maple Leafs slowly found their bearings and opened the scoring with 5:05 left in the first period. Anderson was trapped when Timmins cut through the air. This allowed the Maple Leafs defender to take the puck back and make fun of the Canadian forward. Timmins’ shot then deflected off Christian Dvorak before hitting the target.
Nylander doubled the Maple Leafs’ lead 5:39 into the second period, during a power play. He beat defender Lane Hutson entering the zone, then beat Montembeault with a good throw from the slot.
The Maple Leafs added a third goal at 8:24, this time shorthanded. Matheson wanted to leave the disc behind after entering the zone, but he did not have a teammate to take the disc back. Kirby Dach also fell on the play, which allowed the Leafs to attack two on one. Marner passed to David Kampf, who failed to shoot. However, Kampf returned the puck to Marner, who was able to throw into an open net.
The Canadian gave a sign of life by scoring on a power play 62 seconds later. Gallagher hit the puck on the fly on a return after a throw from Emil Heineman.
This goal allowed Gallagher to join Stéphane Richer in 19th place in Canadian history with 225 goals.
The Maple Leafs restored their three-goal lead at 12:15, scoring again on the power play. Tavares tried twice to beat Montembeault, while Jake Evans was unable to counter him, having lost his stick on the Maple Leafs forward’s first shot.
The Canadian increased the pressure early in the third period. Once again, he lacked opportunism. Anderson notably came up against Woll, then Hutson missed the target a little later.
The rest of the game was just a formality.
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