With team captain Auston Matthews back from injury, the Toronto Maple Leafs will try to extend their winning streak to four games on Sunday night against the visiting Philadelphia Flyers.
Matthews returned to action Saturday night after missing six games with an upper-body injury and had an empty-net goal and two assists in a 6-4 home win over the Boston Bruins.
“I felt good,” said Matthews, a five-time All-Star and three-time NHL goal-scoring leader, including last season (69). “I thought my linemates made it pretty easy for me tonight, too. The chemistry was there.”
His linemates were Matthew Knies, who had his first career hat trick and two assists, and Mitchell Marner, who had an empty-net goal and four assists.
“It felt incredible,” Knies said. “Felt the luck back on my side and that was a good game, a good overall effort from all of us in here.”
The Maple Leafs and Flyers will be meeting for the first time this season, with a rematch set for Tuesday in Philadelphia.
The Flyers will be completing a six-game road trip with a chance to gain a split. They dropped three of the first five games after losing 5-2 to the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday.
Toronto was 3-3-0 during Matthews’ most recent absence.
“(Matthews) is our captain, he’s a great player, we all know that,” Toronto coach Craig Berube said. “Having him in the lineup gives you a lot more options, obviously, and he just drives the pace of play. He’s an extremely hard worker, plays 200 feet. The pace goes up for everybody.”
Matthews missed nine games in November with the injury and Toronto was 7-2-0.
“It’s not always going to be pretty, but just to be able to find a way to win whether it’s through good goaltending, good special teams, it’s not going to be perfect every night,” Matthews said. “Good teams find a way to win, and obviously you like to be able to win in different ways. We’ve shown we can do that.”
Flyers coach John Tortorella said his team deserved better than a 1-2-0 record in the past three games.
“I thought we could have had points in all of them,” Tortorella said after practice on Saturday. “We didn’t, we just keep playing. We keep on working on our game, what we’re doing, corrections when we need to make corrections. Just the last game, I thought we played well. I watched the tape yesterday against Vegas, I thought we could’ve come away with points there.”
Philadelphia’s power play has been effective with a goal in each of the past two games, both by Travis Konecny.
“It’s clicking right now,” said Owen Tippett, who had the primary assist on both power-play goals. “I think we’ve done a good job with the group we have out there and communicating. I think we’ve done a good job at kind of filling holes. I know we have our positions, but if guys see a gap open, they go to that gap and it makes it easier for the guy (with the) puck to have those options.”
Morgan Frost, Joel Farabee and Jamie Drysdale complete the new power-play alignment.
“Hopefully, it keeps on growing because there is a little bit of chemistry there,” Tortorella said. “I think Jamie’s done a better job, too, up top. That’s been a weakness of ours during the years, finding someone that can run it up top. I think Jamie’s feeling more comfortable there.”
–Field Level Media
