Standout performances lift Maple Leafs to win in Vancouver

Two Herculean performances, and yet the points were bigger.

John Tavares and Frederik Andersen submitted likely their best games of the season in a 4-1 triumph over the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday night, allowing the Toronto Maple Leafs to run their road-trip record to 2-0.

Tavares carried the load offensively, scoring twice and setting up Auston Matthews for another, while Andersen turned aside 38 shots — including a handful of third-period breakaways and 16 shots in the final frame — to preserve the win.

The Maple Leafs will move on to Calgary to continue their tour of Western Canada on Thursday night before meeting the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday.

Until then, four points:

Boeser’s number

The most frustrated Canuck, for that there is no question.

With the Maple Leafs clinging to a two-goal lead in the third period and the Canucks running downhill on the visitors with those nasty score effects, Brock Boeser offered two different shot locations on as many breakaway opportunities, and was denied with each.

Here’s the first on a brutal William Nylander turnover:

And the second:

The puck didn’t stop following Boeser around, and he ended up with a game-high seven individual scoring chances. But he couldn’t come up with the equalizer once Josh Leivo finally pulled Vancouver to within one.

Punching back

Now that we better understand Sheldon Keefe’s tendencies, the combination he sent out to accompany Mitch Marner after the dynamic winger had exited the penalty box early on in the second period shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

In an effort to win back some momentum and hit back following prolonged stretches on the back foot defending, it was top centres Matthews and Tavares that Keefe chose to replace the penalty killers and reignite the attack.

In a way, the strategy failed. Matthews, Tavares and Marner spent the entire shift together chasing around the spillover pressure from the Canucks power play. But because Matthews and Tavares had enough left in the reserve to chase down the puck after Travis Dermott finally grabbed a hold of it and carried it into the offensive zone, the decision wound up paying dividends.

A scramble off a point shot left Vancouver vulnerable and Matthews wide open for the controlling Tavares, who landed a no-look pass onto the shooter’s stick to achieve the first profitable Tavares-to-Matthews connection at even strength since the two became teammates two summers ago.

It was like they had been doing it all along — even if they haven’t been. Not once did Tavares set up the Maple Leafs sniper in 41 minutes and seven seconds shared at 5-on-5 all season with Mike Babcock in charge.

They’ve logged over 15 minutes together in nine games since the coaching change.

No rest

With the Maple Leafs in a serious struggle for a postseason spot along with the other under- and over-performing Atlantic Division teams, much of the conversation for the remainder of the season around the Maple Leafs will centre around Andersen’s workload.

While 60 minutes will remain 60 minutes, always, it’s worth considering how taxing — or not — it might be for the netminder when the Maple Leafs are right in the defensive zone.

Before score effects took over and they were blitzed by the Canucks, the Maple Leafs defended with a notable and effective passiveness — especially at the wing position. It was almost as though they were welcoming point shots that would have to evade both traffic, as well as Andersen himself, to count.

It looked something like this after two periods.

Obviously conceding shots from lower-danger areas is preferred over the alternative, which was the multiple breakaways we saw in the third, but the stress was high and the attentiveness had to be exact even before the third-period onslaught. Vancouver racked up 62 total shot attempts in the contest, including 39 on target.

Considering the sheer volume and amount of variables at play when the puck is sent on a path toward the net, the Leafs’ defensive tactics, even when clicking, will require Andersen to be sharp.

The netminder was just that in the first two periods. Then much more than that in the third.

Keeping pace

If Vancouver-Toronto felt a little less important for the simple fact that it was on a Tuesday night in December and not leading a Hockey Night in Canada broadcast, the stakes for the Leafs were enough to make up for it.

Save for Tampa Bay and Florida competing in a three-point game, it turned out to be the worst-case scenario from the seven o’clock slate for the Maple Leafs. Tampa Bay, Montreal and Buffalo each banked two points before puck drop in Vancouver, with the active team with the biggest cushion at the time, Florida, being the only one to fail to add to the season total.

But because the Maple Leafs joined their division rivals in the win column, it only became more cramped in the standings between the four teams chasing the idle Boston Bruins.

Now separating the bunch? Just three points.

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