Byron Burns the Leafs

 

Last night for the first time since 1979 two forever rivals the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs opened their playoff series as game one took place at the Scotia Bank Arena. Carey Price would get the start in goal for Montreal and his play would be in question as he had missed over a month of hockey due to a concussion and in his only conditioning appearance in the AHL for the Laval Rocket he lost 2-0 to the Toronto Marlies stopping 13 of 15 shots. Jack Campbell who has stepped in as the number one goal for Toronto would make his first playoff start of his NHL career. Also making his Leaf debut last night was Riley Nash who would slot in on the third line for the Leafs.

Now before I talk about last night’s matchup, I have to talk about the obvious situation surrounding this game and that is the status of John Tavares. Just before the midway point of the period after being hit by Ben Chairot as he was on the ice Montreal’s Corey Perry who was trying to jump over Tavares ended up kneeing the Toronto captain in the head. John would receive immediate medical attention from medical staffs of both teams as John was clearly dazed. John Tavares would then be stretchered off the ice and end up spending the night in the hospital before being discharged today with no structural damage but is out indefinitely with a concussion. Now last night and even at the time of writing this article I have seen people saying Perry kneeing Tavares was intentional and to those people I think you need to look at the play again there was absolutely nothing Perry could do this game is played at such a high speed and there was no time for Tavares to protect himself. After the teams would reset and try to play hockey again right off the faceoff Nick Foligno would drop the gloves with Perry to show support for his fallen teammate and to also try and spark his team to get them focused on playing a a game.

Unfortunately for the Leafs the scoring would be opened by Montreal as after a offensive zone turnover by Toronto Montreal’s Eric Stall would send a pass to Josh Anderson sending him in on a break away and Anderson would beat Jack Campbell on the glove side to give the visiting Canadiens the 1-0 lead a lead they would take with them into the first intermission.

                                                                                                                                                                   

The second period would see the Leafs play with some jump and would begin to work their way back into the game and four minutes into the second period Justin Holl would fire a point shot that Foligno would deflect and William Nylander at the side of the net would shovel in the rebound tying the game at 1-1. Toronto would continue to press the action now that they were level, but Carey Price put any doubt to rest as he made some key saves to keep the game tied after 40 minutes of play.

With 20 minutes remaining and the game tied Toronto would continue to press for the go-ahead goal and early on it looked as if the hometown Leafs were going to break through as Nylander would skate in on a 2 on 1 with Mitch Marner and Marner would see his one timed shot turned aside by a sprawling Carey Price. Throughout the game Toronto had numerous powerplay opportunities and despite having their chances the Leafs failed to score. In fact, the Leafs would be on the powerplay when Montreal would pull ahead for good in the game as Joe Thornton would turn the puck over and Paul Byron would win a foot race against Rasmus Sandin who would end up tripping Byron but from his knees, he would send the puck into the roof of the net giving the Canadiens the 2-1 lead. Sadly, time would expire, and Montreal would take the 1-0 series lead.

 Game 2 of the series comes Saturday night and with Tavares out for the foreseeable future Pierre Engvall and Alex Galchenyuk will draw back into the lineup to bring some speed into the bottom six portion of the lineup. After the game Tavares was reportedly communicating with his teammates telling them that he is fine and for them to focus on winning game 2, and I think that is exactly what Toronto is going to do because now that the players know their captain is going to be alright, they can now focus on the task at hand and that is evening this playoff series.