Stars forward Sam Steel trips-up Maple Leafs forward Max Domi during Dallas's 4-1 victory on Tuesday night at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on Jan. 14.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
As a head coach searching for ways to inject energy into the Toronto Maple Leafs’ top line, Craig Berube’s Steven Lorentz experiment paid almost instant dividends on Tuesday night.
On just his second shift skating alongside Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, Lorentz played third wheel sufficiently well to provide the Leafs’ all-star duo with enough time and space to work the puck between them. The result? A 15th goal of the season for Matthews, and a team-leading 46th assist for Marner, who entered play tied for fifth in points alongside Connor McDavid with 59.
More importantly for a team that was coming off back-to-back losses – including a 3-0 shutout loss at home to the Vancouver Canucks last Saturday in which the Leafs mustered just 20 shots – it represented a valuable 1-0 lead just 4:15 into the game.
Unfortunately for Leaf fans, that was pretty much the high point of what turned into a 4-1 loss to the Dallas Stars. The Central Division stalwarts entered the game with one point fewer than Toronto in the NHL standings, but came in on a roll, having gone 9-1-1 in its past 11 games, including a seven-game win streak before losing in Ottawa on Sunday.
“Obviously not the result we wanted, playing against a really good team, a perennial contender, so we knew the challenge,” John Tavares said afterward. “I really liked our start. Had some really good chances to extend our lead, hit a few posts, and then we lost the special teams battle from there.”
Certainly the Stars’ power play, which converted two of its three chances, went a long way to tilt the contest in Dallas’s favour. Toronto’s, conversely, did not, as the unit – with its reassembled five-forward first line – failed to cash in either of its opportunities.
“I thought we defended well against a real good team, and they’re tight too,” Berube said. “They don’t give you much. So it was going to be a low-event game five on five and special teams were the difference tonight.”
Toronto, which had won its previous seven meetings against Dallas, will now have less than 48 hours to dust itself off before it faces former head coach Sheldon Keefe and his New Jersey Devils when they come to town on Thursday.
The day had started with much excitement for Lorentz, who had only learned of his promotion to the team’s top line the day before.
As someone who had grown up supporting the Leafs, getting to ride shotgun alongside a pair of players who will be representing their countries in next month’s 4 Nations Face-Off was something of a dream come true for the entire family. Lorentz’s father was as surprised as anyone else at the turn of events.
“I just sent him a text after practice, and I just got ‘Wowza’ back, and I haven’t really talked to him since, but I know he’s excited,” Lorentz said Tuesday morning. While the erstwhile fourth-liner said all the right things about playing with two players who arguably see the game on a different plane, he admitted he was a little nervous about the whole thing.
But with the puck luck conspiring against the Leafs on this night – the team clanked pucks off the goalposts on three occasions – and the game sliding away from the home side, it wasn’t exactly choice conditions for a top-line audition.
Logan Stankoven, who came into the game tied for fourth among NHL rookies with 20 points, was all over Joseph Woll after a rebound from a Sam Steel shot, finally locating the puck behind the goaltender’s pads and knocking it home at the 8:33 mark of the first period.
Stankoven then turned provider in the second period. With John Tavares in the box for a slashing penalty, the rookie and centre Mavrik Bourque both got consecutive touches to tip a shot from Thomas Harley past a bewildered Woll for a 2-1 lead just after the game’s halfway point.
With the Leafs now in desperate need of offence, the Lorentz experiment was shelved, with regular first-line winger Matthew Knies back on Matthews’s left side by the third period. But as the Leafs captain explained, it was a situational shift, not anything that Lorentz did or didn’t do.
“There wasn’t a whole lot of flow in the game to begin with,” Matthews said. “But I thought, obviously we started well. Stevie, you know what you’re gonna get out of him, what to expect from him. He’s gonna work hard. He’s gonna be hard on pucks, he’s an easy guy to play with so sometimes the game situation just gives you different looks.
“And tonight obviously we’re trying to mix some things up and try to get some offence, going especially during the third.”
It didn’t work though, as it was Dallas finding the third-period offence, tacking on two more over the final 20 minutes.
Matt Duchene got the first, taking the puck from Wyatt Johnson on a Dallas power play and beating Woll on a between-the-legs shot just 1:06 into the period, before Stankoven grabbed his second goal of the game, deflecting a shot from Duchene past Woll.
The Leafs goaltender dropped to 14-8 on the season, making 19 saves. Jake Oettinger earned the win for Dallas, making 27 saves.
The final goal also saw Jason Robertson earn a rare point in a matchup with his brother, Leafs winger Nick Robertson. Despite being the Stars’ second-highest scorer, and coming into the game with 22 points in his past 20 games, the older Robertson had just one assist in his first five meetings against Nick’s Leafs, with his younger brother getting three goals and one assist over that span.
But likely far more important that the individual stat was the result, which gave Jason Robertson his first NHL win over his younger sibling.
Family ties didn’t mean a whole lot to the Leafs fans in attendance Tuesday, though, with a chorus of boos starting up with two and a half minutes to play as Toronto fell to just its second three-game losing streak of the Berube era.