Toronto Maple Leafs' William Nylander scores his second goal of the period past Buffalo Sabres goaltender Chad Johnson during a game at the Air Canada Centre, in Toronto, on April 2, 2018.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Call it a spring-cleaning game for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
They are at work trying to clean up a few areas of their play in their last three games of the NHL’s regular season in order to be ready for the playoffs. The cleaning worked well enough for a 5-2 win Monday night over the Buffalo Sabres, who may be the worst team in the league but still usually manage to give the Leafs fits.
The win also gave the Leafs 103 points, which tied them with the 20 03-04 Maple Leafs for the most in franchise history. However, the shootout was not in use to break ties when the earlier edition of the Leafs hit that mark. Seven of Toronto’s wins this season came in the shootout.
“I think we’ve just been building, trying to form some good habits. You get a little lackadaisical about some habits,” said goaltender Curtis McElhinney, who played his role in the tune-up by giving No. 1 goalie Frederik Andersen a second consecutive game to rest. “I think the best thing for us in the next two games is to continue to build, fine-tune some things.”
One of those things is the second power-play unit, which is anchored by Auston Matthews and William Nylander. It has been inconsistent, although Matthews and Nylander were firing in unison against the Sabres with two goals and one assist each, with both of Matthews’s goals coming on the power play.
Matthews and Nylander each set up the other for a goal, with Matthews sending Nylander in on a breakaway in the second period with a beautiful stretch pass up the middle of the ice. Nylander returned the favour in the third by feeding Matthews for his second power-play goal.
This gave Matthews three power-play goals on the season (33 overall) with two of them coming on Monday night. Winger Andreas Johnsson scored the other Leafs goal, his second of the season, in the first period.
Both of the Sabres’ goals came on the power play. Sam Reinhart scored the first one early in the second period and Jason Pominville added another early in the third.
“I feel like we’ve had that since we started playing with each other last year and especially with [linemate Zach] Hyman as well,” Matthews said of the chemistry between him and Nylander. “The more you play with somebody, obviously, you build more chemistry and get to know them and have a feel for where they’re going to be in certain areas. We definitely showed that tonight.”
Matthews also said the power-play goals were a confidence-builder.
“Yeah, it’s nice,” he said. “You score a couple power-play goals it gives you some confidence. I think the last three four five games we’ve had some good opportunities and scored some goals just being simple and getting pucks to the net.”
Despite the offensive fireworks, the game had the feel of just what it was, a meaningless late-season encounter between two teams whose endings in the Eastern Conference’s Atlantic Division were decided a long time ago. The Leafs are locked into third place in the division and will play either the Boston Bruins or the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of the playoffs.
The Sabres are in their third tank job in the past four years, trying for last place overall and the best chance in the entry-draft lottery to get the first pick and franchise defenceman Rasmus Dahlin. Last night’s loss left them with three games to play and a five-point lead on the 30th-place Arizona Coyotes.
The Leafs, aside from the tinkering, rested a few players and had what appears to be good news on injured defenceman Travis Dermott. The rookie, who was hit on the foot by a shot in Saturday’s loss to the Winnipeg Jets, is not seriously injured, according to Leafs head coach Mike Babcock. He did not play against the Sabres but could be back before the regular-season ends on Saturday for the Leafs.
“They did the X-ray and it was negative,” Babcock said after the game-day skate. “Then they did the CT scan and it was negative. Now he’s walking around and all that so it’s just give him a couple of days here and he should be up and running.”
One sign the Leafs expect Dermott back in the lineup soon is no one was promoted from the Toronto Marlies farm team to serve as the extra defenceman. Connor Carrick replaced Dermott for the Sabres game.
Babcock used the absence of Dermott to play with his defence pairings. He moved Carrick to the top pair with Morgan Rielly and put Rielly’s regular partner Ron Hainsey with Nikita Zaitsev.
“We wanted to play Hainsey and Zaitsev together anyway – that’s why we did it, for no other reason than that. We wanted to see it and how that looks if we need to do that,” Babcock said. “The rest of the pairs, we’re going to get [Dermott] back, he’s going to skate [Tuesday] and then we’ll get back to doing what we normally do. We wanted to check it out and see how it looked.”
Vancouver Canucks forwards Henrik and Daniel Sedin announced Monday they will retire after 17 seasons with the team. Daniel Sedin says life after the NHL will be different but adds they are “happy” with the decision.
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Jake Gardiner drew the second assist on Matthews’ second goal, which gave the defenceman 50 points for the season. That gives the Leafs two 50-point defencemen, as Rielly hit 51 with his assist on Matthews’ first goal.
“Yeah, that’s pretty cool, I didn’t know that,” Gardiner said of the double milestone. “Morgan [Rielly] has had a great year for us but I think just as a team it’s been a pretty good year, 103 points.”
Also getting the night off were forwards Leo Komarov, who was excused for personal reasons after returning to the lineup on Saturday from an injury, and Kasperi Kapanen.
The one area that still needs cleaning up remains penalty killing, as the Sabres scored twice in five opportunities.
“We’ve just got to be ready for the playoffs,” Hyman said. “We’ve got three games to shore up things on the PK [penalty killing] and get back in the [NHL’s] top 10.
“Things are so tight five-on-five you need to have an advantage somewhere. To have an advantage on both ends, on the power play and the penalty kill, is big. It’s a reason you do well and made the playoffs. Most playoff teams have good special teams.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the Leafs had 103 points in the 2004-05 season. This version has been corrected.