The Maple Leafs have a long climb ahead of them, but a win was the first step – The New York Times

NHL
Max Domi ended a 23-game goal drought with the game-winner in the third period. Dan Hamilton / Imagn Images
Only hours after the general manager and head coach glumly explained the firing of assistant coach Marc Savard, there were smiles and good vibes in the Toronto Maple Leafs’ dressing room.
A win can do that, especially for a team in crisis.
Keith Pelley, the head of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE), milled about the room in a Maple Leafs letterman jacket. He exchanged small talk with goaltender Joseph Woll.
Advertisement
Max Domi, holder of the team’s player of the game belt for his game-winning goal heroics, wished head coach Craig Berube a merry Christmas as he made his way for the exits.
“We scored tonight,” Berube said of beating the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday afternoon. “That’s the difference. We scored goals tonight.”
It was only one win, but a win the Leafs desperately needed — not just for the standings but to temporarily lower the temperature in the aftermath of Savard’s sudden and unusual firing early Monday evening.
It wasn’t an especially pretty or convincing victory. Though they did control the game at five-on-five, the Leafs let a 3-1 lead slip away only to have Domi, a healthy scratch in Nashville only a few days earlier, play hero with a daring solo effort. It was his first goal since Oct. 28, ending a 23-game drought.
The Leafs, struggling to score recently amid the power-play woes that prompted Savard’s ouster, ultimately pumped six into the Pittsburgh net, including two from William Nylander during a four-point outing. It was the most electric Nylander has looked in weeks. Berube complimented his willingness to take pucks to the net afterward.
Nylander didn’t smile or even celebrate when he beat Stuart Skinner on a breakaway to open the scoring barely nine minutes into the first period. It was his first goal since Nov. 26, ending an 11-game drought. He added the primary helper on Matias Maccelli’s fifth goal of the season later in the period, very nearly tipping the puck into the net himself.
That line, with John Tavares in the middle, has been a minor and rather unexpected bright spot of late as Berube continues to search for combinations that work. (The latest top-line gambit had Bobby McMann playing next to Domi and Auston Matthews.) Particularly unexpected because Maccelli sat for nine games in a row before Berube finally dropped him back into the lineup this past Saturday in Nashville.
Advertisement
In the first ripple effect of Savard’s dismissal, Maccelli also got the nod for duty on the man advantage with another new-look PP1 alongside Nylander, Tavares, Matthews and Morgan Rielly.
Brad Treliving suggested in the pre-game press conference that it would be assistant coach Derek Lalonde running the power play, for one game anyway, while Berube said it would be a staff effort. Lalonde is also responsible for the penalty kill.
“Is he running the meetings?” Berube said of Lalonde. “Yes.”
The Leafs had only 47 seconds of five-on-four power-play time against the Penguins, along with a brief four-on-three opportunity, and did not score. Time will tell what impact, if any, the change in direction there will have — or whether the team will end up bringing in outside help.
“It was the first time that I’ve had that happen in my career,” Steven Lorentz (who added a breakaway goal in the second) said of the Savard firing, which came 35 games into the season.
In beating the Penguins, the Leafs climbed out of last place in the Eastern Conference. The climb back up into a playoff spot remains steep. There are still seven teams in their way — including the Ottawa Senators, who are on deck in the first game after the holiday break — and their remaining schedule is among the most difficult in the league.
This is not a position this team, of this era, is used to being in. That of the climber. That of the team having to scratch and claw just to get into the postseason.
At the time of the break last season, the Leafs were comfortably in a playoff position – second in the Atlantic with 44 points and only two points behind the Panthers team they would eventually unseat. They were second in the Atlantic in each of the two years before that.
It remains to be seen whether Berube can lead this group out of this hole and whether there is a weeks-long heater coming that will vault this group back, ultimately, into the playoffs for the 10th season in a row.
A win, just one, was the first step.
Said Lorentz, “We’ll take two points right now any way we can get it.”
Jonas Siegel is a staff writer on the Maple Leafs for The Athletic. Jonas previously covered the Leafs for TSN and AM 640. He was also the national hockey writer for the Canadian Press. Follow Jonas on Twitter @jonassiegel

source