Mike Babcock said the Toronto Maple Leafs left the matter of a cure for the famous NHL western road trip hangover in the hands of their sports-science team.
The Leafs head coach didn’t say what the cure was, but by the end of Monday’s game it was clear it was Frederik Andersen. The Leafs goaltender once again was the best player on the ice by far, holding the Leafs in the game until they shook off the effects of last week’s California road trip and found their legs.
Andersen finished with 37 saves as the Leafs spotted the Blue Jackets' two first-period goals and then came back for a 4-2 win at home. Zach Hyman completed the comeback with what proved to be the winning goal on a deflection of a Morgan Rielly shot with four minutes and 22 seconds left in the third period. Then Hyman scored his second of the game, an empty-net goal with 1:01 left in the third. It was the Leafs’ fourth consecutive win, including a three-game sweep on the California trip.
“He’s been tremendous,” Leafs centre John Tavares said of Andersen. “Certainly Freddy from start to finish was our best player tonight. He’s been playing unbelievable.
“We try to make it as easy as possible for him, try not to make it too stressful. Obviously, the more we stay in the offensive zone we know he’s going to stop the shots he faces. You can just see the confidence he has in challenging pucks and the confidence we have in him.”
Well, Tavares and his teammates did not make it easy for Andersen in the first period since the game started as predicted for the Leafs, one of those tough slogs at home following an extended jaunt on the road. For a long stretch in the first period the Leafs indeed seemed zoned out as pucks were passed to empty spaces or to the Blue Jackets.
Babcock matched Tavares and linemates Hyman and Mitch Marner against the Blue Jackets’ top line of centre Pierre-Luc Dubois and wingers Artemi Panarin and Cam Atkinson, who has had a hot scoring hand of late. It was a lopsided match in the first period, as the Columbus line pounced on two bad attempts to move the puck out of the Leafs zone for goals from Atkinson and Dubois and a 2-0 lead for the visitors.
At this point, with the Blue Jackets outshooting the Leafs 14-6 and dominating the hosts’ best line, the game was going according to the script. The Leafs seemed to have an especially bad case of that western hangover.
Tavares talked about the effect after the morning skate on Monday and sounded a prescient note.
“I think getting off to a good start is always your intention,” he said. “Sometimes it doesn’t go that way. It’s how you respond. [The Blue Jackets] don’t give you a whole lot, they have a lot of depth in a lot of areas.”
Babcock, who dealt with the western effect regularly when he coached the Detroit Red Wings when they played in the Western Conference, said it’s simply a fact of NHL life and has to be dealt with.
“It’s not a letdown, it’s just science. It’s the facts,” he said. “You know it’s going to be a difficult one with the time change. It’s a tough one. It just flat-out is.
“We try to do everything right and have all the [sports] science people involved. We did what they told us and we’ll see what happens.”
What happened was Andersen decided two goals were all the Blue Jackets were going to get and the Tavares line got to work after some help from the fourth line. Tyler Ennis, who hit the post in the first period, scored at 13:01 to get the Leafs moving and then Tavares, Marner and Hyman took over.
Marner made one of those creative plays seemingly only he can to tie the score at 17:20 of the second period. It started with a long pass up the right side by forward Kasperi Kapanen to Marner. He took the pass and made a nice move on Columbus defenceman Scott Harrington to give himself a backhand shot on Bobrovsky, who made the save. But Marner followed the shot in and with a nifty bit of stick-work picked the rebound away from the goalie and flicked it back to Tavares, who cruised into the slot and buried his 13th goal of the season.
“Freddy [Andersen] shut the door after that first period and we kind of rallied behind him,” Hyman said. “All four lines contributed and [it was] just a big team win.”