The Weekly Leaflet -February 9 2013: Leafs at Canadiens

It's sunday?

The Leafs played last night?

The Canadiens tried to?

Well now, I guess I have a game recap for you then! How fun.

The leafs wound up at the bell centre in montreal last night, playing montreal for the second time this season, looking to build on the momentum they'd gained over the course of the week.

With back to back monday/tuesday night games against southeast opponents, things looked grim - they started that way too. after going getting the lead early in the game, the team dropped four straight goals to the Staal brothers Hurricanes, ultimately losing 4-1.

humourous graphic courtesy sportsnet ontario

The next night, the team put a decidedly better performance in front of netminder Ben Scrivens, who picked up the win over the Capitals as James van Riemsdyk had a big night, potting a pair added to by Korbinian Holzer, who picked up his first NHL goal. 

Two nights later, the Leafs flew into Winterpeg, and beat the Jets 3-2 with Phil Kessel providing the game winner late in the game, registering his first goal of the season.

Would the Leafs be able to carry this momentum into Montreal on this Saturday night?

Would the Canadiens show up?

Would Don Cherry embarrass himself?

For answers to these questions, and many more - go over that there jump/cut thingy.

Due to typical CBC shenanigans, a game with a "7:05" puck drop didn't get underway until well after that point. This excuse this time time around was the annual "Hockey Day in Canada" a pandering CBC/Kraft/Molson/Whoever venture made to remind Canadians that hockey is ours... and they can never take it away. (except when they lock out the league and we, the canadian broadcasting corporation, make almost zero effort to show other hockey)

For those not in the know, that means they go to some Canadian "rural" town and focus on the "grass-roots" aspects of hockey. You still see loads of toothless grins, they're just from kids. It would be cute, if it wasn't a 12-hour affair.

Anyway, this obviously led to a ceremonial face-off! But not even in the arena our lovely Leafs game is being held at, no. This one would be a ceremonial face-off between the Peterborough Petes and Sault Sainte Marie Greyhounds. Now, before he could drop the puck to get the "pink the rink" (an annual cancer charity game featuring pink creases and pink novelty game jerseys) game going in Peterborough, ol' Donny had to have an official police escort into the arena from the parking lot as Ron Maclean hyped him up over the arena PA (his accomplishments are surprisingly short to list out loud).

So, y'know, about 20 minutes later we were finally able to get to the national anthems in Montreal. ugh.

Starting goaltenders for the night are James Reimer, and Carey "don't call me cowboy" Price.

i'm not saying carey isn't a good goalie. i'm just saying he might be a douche.

Thankfully Carey is actually making it into this game, and not being injured in the warm ups.

yippee-kay-yay

Things don't open up particularly well for Mr. Price and Le Bleu, Blanc, et Rouge. After a pretty horrendous give-away in the neutral zone, a lot of hussle from Nikolai Kulemin leads to Leo Komarov (promoted to the Grabovski/Kulemin unit) netting his first NHL goal.

he's a happy looking man.

gif from a different angle - don't let don see you do that, leo.

The Canadiens kept running around and looking really disheveled and pretty bad at hockey for at least another 5 or 6 minutes. The Leafs drove the play and pressured the Habs for much and this period which ultimately lead to Tyler Bozak converting on a flubbed pass/shot from James van Riemsdyk (who's on fire of late) to put the Leafs up 2-0 early.

aww, yeah. look at that puck movement.

The Canadiens settled down a degree after this point, but not before the faithful started booing pretty heartily... somewhat rare for the first. In the dying seconds of the period, there was a brief flurry around the Leafs net. Reimer handled it pretty readily, but in a sign of things to come throughout the game, the Leafs got a little chippy in defending their goaltender (thankfully) and Korbinian Holzer and David Desharnais were given matching roughing penalties for their respective roles in this interaction.

The Leafs got a little lackadaisical in the closing seconds playing 4 on 4, and narrowly avoided allowing an uncovered Brian Gionta an easy tip in goal. That said, they managed to head to the dressing room unscathed and up by two. The Leafs outshot Montreal 12-8 in the first.

Intermission brought the typical rah-rah Don Cherry fun, but on the plus side, it took place in an arena, during a game - goals were scored, and Don was briefly drowned out. It was almost funny. Anyway, he defended goons and made sure to remind us all of the Korean War. 

Priorities. Don Cherry has them.

The ice was cleaned, beers bought, hot dogs eaten, the second period was here.

The teams returned to play at 4 on 4, and Montreal definitely appeared to have shaken off whatever was afflicting them early in the game. During periods of extended pressure they were kept mostly to the perimeter, but able to manufacture some chances that Reimer dealt with quite aptly.

Once the teams had returned to five aside, coach Carlyle was able to activate his secret plan - get Kessel and JVR on the ice. Interesting aside, it's never a problem to have too many good players, but what happens when Lupul gets back? Where does he or JVR wind up?

Anyway, with operation put-the-good-players-out-there in full effect, the Leafs had Montreal hemmed deep in their zone for an extended period of time. After some nifty cycling work down low, Phil Kessel came out from behind the net, all eyes on him, and fed a slick little feed to van Riemsdyk, who snapped it home for the 3-0 lead. 

qu'est que le fuck montreal? gaurdez tonne homme

The Canadiens didn't roll over and die at this point in time however, and continued pressing the play in the Leafs end. Reimer continued to be solid, and the teams exchanged powerplays for much of the middle of the game. Toronto failed to capitalize on penalties to Cole for slashing, Gallagher for diving (this one was actually pretty hilarious, and probably not a dive) and Prust for roughing. Montreal failed to score on calls against Phaneuf for interference and Fraser for not being able to clear the puck without shooting it over the glass (our second least favourite penalty).

James Reimer had to be sharp in the second period. After facing just 8 shots in the first, he'd face 20 in the second, many of which were prime scoring oppurtunities, like this one - where he robs Erik Cole.

yeah. that book's out on reimer. keep shooting high glove.

Unphased by Montreal's attack, the Leafs continued to press when chances presented themselves. Late in the second Rene Bourque would take a (questionable) high-sticking call, and the Leafs would convert on the ensuing powerplay. Watch Phil Kessel rifle one through a crowd after a neat little backhand pass from Phaneuf.

the powerplay scores without kostka? No way!

Montreal would continue to press, and local GTA hero Mike Kostka would take a (questionable, there were lots of these) call for holding late in the second. This powerplay would carry over into the third, but surprise! The Leafs killed it. They were outshot 20-8 in the second though. Not good.

Second Period intermission on the satelitte hotstove or whatever talked about the Tim Thomas trade. That whole deal is a joke. Oh well. Back to playing hockey... sort of.

The third started off with Leafs finishing off that penalty kill, then the Habs sending out their goon line directly there after. The hostility had clearly boiled over by this point, and at 1:09 of the third, Mark Fraser squared off against Brendan Prust in the game's first tilt, but not last, tilt. Fraser handled this pretty well. Montreal isn't exactly stalked up with heavyweights.

A couple of minutes later, clearly fueled by the excitement and rush of seeing those pugilists go toe to toe, Korbinian Holzer (he of the awesome German name) knocked home a lose puck from a Colton Orr (?!?) rush to put the Leafs up by five.

orr was totally on the ice there to play hockey. not... look for people to punch.

eitherway, he almost looked like another famous orr there.

This goal essentially represented the breaking point for les glorieux who from this point forward decided to essentially be giant shit disturbers. Or maybe Kadri started it all earlier when he effed up Emelin.

Kadri-smash!

most of these here gifs are sourced from @dantoman on twitter

Either way, things were pretty silly from this point out. 

First, Mike Kostka took on Brendan Gallagher in the light-heavyweight bout

Next, in typical pineapple-slayer fashion, Grabovski's line was pressing hard for Toronto's 6th around the Canadiens net. This obviously led to a scrum after the whistle, in which fine upstanding player (just out of the box having served his fighting major) Brandon Prust jumped Grabovski. Grabbo went after Prust, and Max Pacioretty grabbed Grabovski, putting him in like, a half-cross-face-chicken-wing. Shit continued to hit the fan, Pacioretty went nuts,  claiming he was bitten, and thus Grabbo-Gate began. Pacioretty and Grabbo were given 10 minute misconducts, as was Prust. Grabovski got an additional roughing minor, Prust got a double-minor, the Leafs got a powerplay and didn't score. 

A lot of talk has come out about this today, and Grabbo has a "hearing" tomorrow with "the department of player safety". Not sure what that means. Did it look like he bit Pacioretty? Maybe. But maybe that's what happens when you randomly put dudes in submission holds. Just sayin'.

pretty much how i feel about this.

While failing to net a goal on the above mentioned powerplay, the Leafs were granted another chance a few minutes later on a penalty to Tomas Plekanec (my third favourite former Hamilton Bulldog).  With the man advantage, Phil Kessel snuck another neat set up pass to Dion Phaneuf (who played a great game pestering Alex Galchenyuk all night) who managed to hit the net this time. 

no lupul man in way mean dion shoot rockpuck more easiest.

If things got silly after the 5th Toronto goal, silly got silly after the 6th. Montreal, still pretty peeved about Grabbo-Gate, was very much taking their chance finish every check and take every liberty they could. This lead to the Leafs getting rough in turn, and Orr running around a bit. Play around the Leafs net was pretty rough, and it seemed the Leafs were loathe to have a repeat of last year's Reimer-on-Gionta-season-ending-injury. Specifically with characters like Armstrong and Gionta trying to take liberties with Reimer again. As such, at the 15:00 mark of the third, Randy Carlyle sent out the fourth line, who spent little time trying to make their point.

Colton Orr quickly went after Brian Gionta, but wound up with Rene Bourque.

Fraser McLaren picked up the pieces, and took on Josh Gorges

it ended poorly for gorges... and well, in a happy way for fraser

Pretty much everyone involved was given 10 minutes and change. 

From here, Toronto played with the puck for the last five minutes of play, ensuring the shutout for James Reimer, a decisive 6-0 victory.

All in all, Reimer stopped all 37 shots he faced (for a SV% of 1.000) whereas Price stopped 22 of 28 (for a SV% of .786) The Leafs dominated in nearly every other aspect of play, and much of the shot disparity is due to a Montreal surge in the second. Reimer was incredibly good when he had to be, which wasn't often.

Phaneuf lead the Leafs with 24:06 of ice time, plus a goal and an assist. Phil "streaky-scorer-worst-trade-ever" Kessel had three points on the night, one goal, and two pretty assists. P.K. Subban was the leader in ice-time for Montreal with 22:22, and managed three shots on goal.

All in all, the Leafs played a pretty good game against a pretty bad opponent. Good to see them doing that for once.

this leo guy is pretty rad.

 Funny fact - this was the first meeting of these two teams where both teams had over .500 records in over six years. Sundin and Koivu were the respective captains then. Heh.

The Leafs play thrice this week, starting on Monday at the ACC against the Flyers (won their last game against Carolina on Saturday 4-3). It will be the first time these teams have met since the JVR/Schenn swap. (heh, how's that working out?)

From there, they play the Staal Brothers Hurricanes in Carolina again on Thursday, followed by the Senators back in Toronto on Saturday. 

With some of the momentum the team has going from beating some better teams and Boston-ing Montreal, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to get out this week without two wins.

Let's see where we wind up next week.