Montreal Canadiens' Rem Pitlick collides with Toronto Maple Leafs' Petr Mrazek during first period NHL hockey action in Montreal, on Feb. 21.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
The Maple Leafs suffered a lopsided loss on Monday night in their first game back in Montreal since their loss in Game 6 of last year’s NHL playoffs. Josh Anderson scored twice for the Canadiens and goaltender Sam Montembeault recorded 35 saves in a 5-2 victory at the Bell Centre. The triumph was the third in a row for the league’s last-placed team and had fans singing in joyous celebration over the whitewashing of their forever rival.
The loss was the second in a row for Toronto and its fourth in six games. The team plays again on Tuesday in Columbus against the Blue Jackets and will be without Jake Muzzin.
The veteran defenceman banged his head on the ice after a collision with Montreal’s Chris Wideman late in the second period and did not return.
Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said Muzzin would not travel to Ohio with his teammates and was expected to have neuorological tests overnight. The 33-year-old has already missed considerable time this season due to a concussion.
The collision occurred only three seconds before the teams were going to head for their dressing rooms during the second intermission. There was no penalty called on the play and it did not look at all like anything other than accidental contact on the behalf of both players.
“It was terrible, as bad as anything you ever see in a game,” Keefe said.
Muzzin laid flat on his back before he eventually skated slowly off the ice and down the tunnel to the locker room.
“It is a tough incident,” fellow defenceman Morgan Rielly said. “He is a big part of our group and a guy we all care very deeply about.”
The contest was only the second between last year’s Stanley Cup first-round combatants, a series Toronto lost in seven games despite taking a 3-1 lead.
Thanks to a quirk in scheduling and COVID-19, they had seen each other only once during the 2021-22 campaign after squaring off 17 times in 63 games last season.
The Maple Leafs won 2-1 on opening night at Scotiabank Arena on the only other occasion they had met.
A crowd limited to 50 per cent capacity greeted the teams at the Belle Centre, where last they had played on May 29, 2021. Two nights later, Toronto lost on home ice and was eliminated from the postseason in the first round for the fifth straight year.
That was quite a while ago, but what happened in the summer of 2021 is still a scab that won’t heal for those on the losing side.
Sure, Rielly, the Maple Leafs defenceman, has plenty of good memories about games in Montreal. But he could not think of one when asked a few hours before the puck drop.
“Being here in the playoffs last year stands out but not for the right reasons,” he said. Upon a return to the arena, he said, “You definitely get those feelings again.”
If this was a feel-good opportunity to at least tamp them down a bit, it was an abysmal failure. Anderson and Cole Caufield each scored in the first period as the Canadiens rolled to their third win in six games under interim head coach Martin St. Louis.
Things went so badly for Toronto that its 38-year-old centre Jason Spezza picked a fight with Montreal’s Nick Suzuki late in the second period as retaliation against a hard but clean hit on teammate Justin Holl.
Ilya Mikheyev and Pierre Engvall scored early in the third for the Maple Leafs but by then they had dug themselves too deep a hole.
Toronto fell to 32-14-3 and remains in third place in the NHL’s Atlantic Division while the Canadiens improved to 11-33-7 and are last.
The similarities between them kind of end at both being NHL teams. The Maple Leafs are at or near the top in many statistical categories, and at the same time the Canadiens are near or at the bottom. Montreal has only two players with 10 goals (Anderson, now with 12, and Rem Pitlick, with 10). Suzuki is its leading scorer with 30 points and only two other players have reached 20.
Toronto has eight players with 20 points or more.
Not that it matters on any one evening. Anderson tapped in a backhand three minutes into the game to put Montreal ahead 1-0. Then Caufield scored on a pretty two-on-one with Anderson to make it 2-0 with 50 seconds left in the first period.
The goal, which knuckled past Toronto goaltender Petr Mrazek, was the fifth in six games for Caufield with St. Louis behind the bench. The rookie winger had one in 30 games before Dominique Ducharme was discharged as head coach.
Almost quicker than you can say, “Okay, boys, let’s get one back early,” the Maple Leafs fell behind 3-0 when Mike Hoffman scored on a breakaway 38 seconds into the second period. Muzzin coughed up a turnover to start the chain of events. Anderson scored for a second time four minutes before the second intermission and Pitlick added another two minutes later.
“We made it kind of difficult on ourselves,” Auston Matthews said. “We just didn’t bring it tonight. You never want to drop two in a row and now we have to put the fire out.”
Montembeault, who had won just three of 17 starts this season, was good enough to stifle Toronto’s offence. Mrazek, who had won four of his previous five outings, stopped 19 of 24 shots in a miserable performance in the visitors’ net.
During the game, the Maple Leafs announced they had acquired veteran netminder Carter Hutton from Arizona. The trade was made two days after they had picked up forward Ryan Dzingel and defenceman Ilya Lyubushkin, also from the Coyotes.
Lyubushkin may be available on Tuesday night.
Toronto is in the midst of its best season in many a moon. Montreal has been terrible but deserved the triumph on Monday.
“They came out strong,” Rielly said. “They have some skilled people over there and if you give them chances like we did they are going to score.
“We have to try to have a short memory and go out and work hard tomorrow.”