After making a one-day pit stop at home for a shootout loss to San Jose, the Toronto Maple Leafs head west for another three-game road trip that starts Wednesday night against the Pacific Division-leading Vegas Golden Knights in Las Vegas.
It’ll be the third game in a four-day stretch for Toronto that began with a 6-5 overtime win Sunday at Pittsburgh. That capped a four-game road trip that also included visits to Chicago, Boston and the New York Rangers.
Toronto has won four in a row on the road and seven of its last eight. The Maple Leafs had an overall five-game winning streak snapped by the lowly Sharks, who rallied to score twice in the third period to tie it and then claimed a 3-2 win on a score by Fabian Zetterlund in the shootout’s fourth round.
It was the second half of a road-home back-to-back for Toronto, which seemed to run out of gas in the final period and failed to score on a 4-on-3 power play in overtime.
“Obviously, it’s not ideal but we’re not going to make excuses for that kind of stuff,” said forward Matthew Knies, who scored a power-play goal in the second period to put Toronto up 2-0. “We just got to be better and play a full 60 minutes. We didn’t do a good job of that today.”
“Well, it’s disappointing,” Toronto coach Craig Berube said of blowing the late lead against a San Jose team with the worst record in the league. “Any loss is disappointing. Two-nothing lead. We’re in a good spot to close it out, and we didn’t do the job. And then we get a chance in OT with the power play and couldn’t get it done.”
Knies had a simple solution for Toronto’s quick turnaround into another long road trip that also includes stops in Denver to face the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday and in Salt Lake City to face the Utah Hockey Club on Monday.
“Just clean the suitcase and put it right back in,” Knies said. “I guess it’s been 10 hours at home, really. It’s fine. We had a good road trip, so we’re just going to replicate that and keep tallying on the wins there.”
Toronto, which is 18-9-2 on the road, plays a Vegas team with the second-best home record in the league at 22-6-3. The Golden Knights are coming off Sunday’s impressive 2-0 victory over the visiting New Jersey Devils.
Adin Hill made 25 saves for his third shutout of the season and Mark Stone and Noah Hanifin each scored power-play goals in the third period to lead Vegas, which has won five of its last six games.
“I thought defensively we were really dialed in,” Golden Knights head coach Bruce Cassidy said.
That hadn’t been the case the previous two games when Vegas gave up four third-period goals in a 5-2 loss at Los Angeles, then yielded four goals over the final two periods in a wild 7-5 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday.
This will be the second of two regular-season meetings. The Maple Leafs, minus injured captain Auston Matthews, won the first one 3-0 on Nov. 20 in Toronto. Joseph Woll posted 31 saves and William Nylander contributed a goal and an assist. Knies left that contest in the second period after taking an open-ice hit from defenseman Zach Whitecloud.
–Field Level Media
