Heading into Thursday’s contest vs. the Vegas Golden Knights, Martin Jones had won just 2 games in 13 appearances, and had knack of getting shelled and subsequently pulled. That wasn’t the case this go around, albeit while facing a bit of a beleaguered squad, and he stopped 23 of 26 shots faced in Toronto’s 7-3 drubbing of the Golden Knights.
The team recently got back Shea Theodore from IR which was great news, but the buzz of that move was quickly snuffed out by Mark Stone’s injury last game which led to him officially being place on IR.
He joins Jack Eichel there, and that’s quite a blow to the team’s forward depth which resulted in the team starting a fourth line of AHL skaters.
The Golden Knights had a rough second half of the first period, as the Maple Leafs scored 4 goals in 6:11, including 2 in 1:10, and 3 in 4:20. Jack McCabe picked up goal No. 6 of the season, David Kampf tallied No. 5, John Tavares No. 17, and finally Max Domi picked up No. 6 as well. Not that there’s any way to defend surrendering 4 goals in such a short period, but it would have been a little easier to understand had they come from Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and William Nylander in addition to Tavares. Those players are legit offensive dynamos who are hard to stop, and surrendering a flurry of goals to depth players was less than ideal.
William Karlsson got one back for the Golden Knights just 51 seconds into the 2nd period, but Toronto tallied two more with Domi scoring again, and Pontus Holmberg picking up goal No. 3 on the season. At that point it was 6-1 Toronto, and the Golden Knights would need to act fast if they wanted to try and mount some form of a comeback. They did just that with Jonathan Marchessault scoring 59 seconds into the period, and Michael Amadio answering 26 seconds later, but that was all the offense they’d muster.
Matthews scored his 52nd goal of the season for good measure at the halfway point of the period, and Toronto sailed comfortably to a 7-3 win. Logan Thompson had a rough night in which he surrendered 4 goals on 22 shots, and he was relieved by Adin Hill who stopped 17 of the 20 he faced in 14:20 of play which was just slightly better.
The Golden Knights will play the Toronto Maple Leafs again on February 27th, and hopefully they enter that game with more structure and a hunger to make up for this rough loss. The Golden Knights are back in action on Saturday, and they will play on the road in Ottawa for the first game of a five-game road trip that ends on March 4th.