A win is a win is a win, and nothing is going to take away the fact that Matthews showed up, put on a three point effort and dragged the Leafs to their first victory of Round 1 (with some big help from Ilya Samsonov). Of course, until the score was 3-2 for the Leafs and they exorcized some of the demons listed in the tweet below, not everyone was feeling great about the game and that’s why we’ll take a look at the +/- for the Leafs in Game 2.
a lot of streaks against #NHLBruins ended last night
-Leafs scored 3 goals for 1st time in last 9 playoff games
-Beat Boston for 1st time in last 8 games
-scored a PP goal for 1st time in last 8 games against Boston
-Finally lead in a game vs Boston in over 372 min https://t.co/0OtiDuJomQ— Carlo Colaiacovo (@CarloColaiacovo) April 23, 2024
I’m sure I could just as easily be picking on Simon Benoit right now but the reality there is that McCabe and Benoit have shown enough together that they can be forgiven for a bad Game 2 and asked to be better. Edmundson is just blocking Brodie from getting a chance in the lineup. I’m sure you could also make a case for sitting Lyubushkin too but I wouldn’t want to rock the boat on any of the things that are working around Morgan Rielly at the moment.
I don’t know how you go with anything other than the Tavares line expected goal differential. Some of that is on bizarre deployment but it still screams for a lineup change.
Leafs lines by xG after 40 minutes.
Not going to work. pic.twitter.com/engZUVoFXS
— James Mirtle (@mirtle) April 23, 2024
After Game 1 it looked like an easy case for bringing T.J. Brodie into the lineup and while there is strong evidence to support that move, Sheldon Keefe having the final line change might mean that he wants to give his current setup another go with a bit more control over their deployment.
Generally speaking it will be interesting to see whether Sheldon Keefe lineup matching is something we are going to see at all or if he’ll acknowledge that setting the pace in Game 2 was his best play and should continue to get his best players out as much as possible.
The last thing to watch for will be what happens if William Nylander is ready to go. The combination of Tavares-Marner not working and having Nylander available could make for some interesting revisions. One pairing I wouldn’t mind seeing is Marner with Kampf, and allowing them to face the Pastrnak line while giving Nylander a chance with Tavares and either Knies or Jarnkrok.
Game 3 is Wednesday Night back in Toronto. Puck Drop is 7pm ET.
Data from NHL.com and Natural Stat Trick
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