The Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers met in an all-Canadian matchup on Hockey Night in Canada on a Saturday night, which is exactly what players on both teams get up for. The Maple Leafs and Oilers are widely considered to be the best two Canadian teams in the NHL right now, aside from the Winnipeg Jets. These types of games are games that fan bases of either team are excited for, especially when you add in the top stars of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, Connor McDavid, and Leon Draisaitl, which gets everyone excited to watch.
Game Recap
In the first period, the intensity of the game was much like a playoff game atmosphere. The Oilers were able to open the scoring early in the first with a goal by Adam Henrique 1:42 in. However, they didn’t have the lead for long; at 3:53, Bobby McMann continued his strong play and jumped on a rebound to tie the game. The rest of the period was fast and furious; the Maple Leafs had two power plays to the Oilers zero. We also were able to see a quick rush from McDavid, who was able to stickhandle in a phone booth before coming out in front of Toronto’s crease. However, Anthony Stolarz was able to shut the door to keep the game tied at 1, heading into the first intermission.
The second period started much like the first, fast and furious. On an early power play, McDavid was able to collect a rebound and give the Oilers a 2-1 lead. Moments after that, Maple Leafs forward Ryan Reaves threw a high hit at Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse, which left him lying on the ice. The hit was assessed a five-minute match penalty for an illegal check to the head. The Maple Leafs were able to kill off the five-minute penalty, only giving up a pair of Oilers shots. The remainder of the period played out a bit slower than the beginning started. It ended with the Oilers heading into the third up 2-1.
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The third period started with a bit more pace than the second ended with. The Maple Leafs were searching for a game-tying goal while the Oilers were looking to close it out on the road. Toronto’s head coach, Craig Berube, was shuffling the lines a bit with his team being down to 11 forwards after Reaves was tossed from the game. Oftentimes, this allows a skilled player to take an extra shift, such as Nylander or Marner. With less than 10 minutes left in the third, Edmonton was preparing to shut the game down, which led to a bad turnover that landed on Matthew Knies’ stick, who buried it from just above the circles to tie the game at 2’s. Just 59 seconds after that, McMann breaks past the Oilers’ defenders and dekes past Stuart Skinner to give the Maple Leafs a 3-2 lead. The Oilers pushed to make it a game with less than five minutes in the game, and with 1:29 left in the third, Draisaitl finds the loose puck and buries it to tie the game at 3-3.
The all-Canadian Saturday night matchup headed to OT; the period started with a speedy dash by McDavid but was turned away by Stolarz. Which was followed up by an odd-man rush by Edmonton that was turned over and led to an odd-man rush for the Maple Leafs. Marner and John Tavares came down on a 2-1, and the best passer on the Maple Leafs decided to hold the puck and pick the bottom left corner on Skinner to send the Maple Leafs home with the win. The game-winning goal by Marner was his 200th career goal, which couldn’t have come at a better time.
