Toronto Maple Leafs beat Carolina Hurricanes 3-2 behind rookie goalie Erik Kallgren
No Auston Matthews? No problem for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Turns out, the Leafs didn’t need the NHL’s top goal scorer to beat the Carolina Hurricanes, taking a 3-2 victory behind rookie goalie Erik Kallgren, who quickly has Leafs fans salivating.
Kallgren blanked the Dallas Stars 4-0 on Tuesday, becoming the fourth goalie in Leafs history to have a shutout in his first career start. The Swede stopped nearly everything again against Carolina (41-14-5), making 34 saves and besting Canes goalie Frederik Andersen, who came into the game with 30 wins.
Ilya Mikheyev scored in the first period and Mitch Marner in the second for the Leafs (39-17-5), who were outshot and out-chanced much of the game but made the most of their offensive opportunities at Scotiabank Arena.
Defenseman Ethan Bear scored for the Canes in the third, moving down into the slot for his fourth of the season. But the Leafs quickly countered as Ondrej Kase scored off the rush for a 3-1 lead.
Carolina’s Vincent Trocheck scored in the final seconds after the Canes pulled Andersen for a sixth attacker.
“I thought our effort was there the whole game,” Trocheck said. “We’ve just got to bear down on our chances.”
The Canes finished with a 36-21 shooting advantage but was 0-3 on three power plays that the Leafs easily snuffed out. Toronto, aggressive on the penalty kill. allowed five shots while getting five shorthanded shots.
Carolina has not scored a power-play goal in the past four games, going 0-10.
“We’re trying to figure it out right now,” Trocheck said of the power play. “It’s a matter of us getting more pucks to the net, maybe playing a little bit simpler. But it’s something we really need to figure out here shortly before the playoffs start.”
It was the second return to Toronto this season for Andersen, and a second loss in Toronto for the former Leafs goaltender. The first came in overtime on Feb. 7, when COVID-19 restrictions limited the crowd in Scotiabank Arena to 500. Those restrictions now lifted, the crowd was 18,134 on Thursday.
Matthews, who has 45 goals, was serving the second game of a two-game suspension for a cross-check to the neck of Buffalo’s Rasmus Dahlin. That might have hurt the Leafs on the power play -- Toronto was 0-2 -- but not in its overall five-on-five game as the Leafs forced the Canes into bad decisions and costly mistakes.
“We always play hard, which is good, but we have to capitalize on our chances,” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “You’re going to make mistakes but I give them credit. They capitalized and got the win out of it.”
Canes defenseman Brady Skjei had the puck with an open net and Kallgren without his paddle in the opening moments of the game but could not convert. Skjei had another good chance to start the second period denied by Kallgren.
“We just didn’t score,” Brind’Amour said. “The first shift of the game we have an empty net. First shift in the second there’s an empty net (but) a great save. You have to capitalize on those and if you don’t a great team is going to make you pay and that’s what happened.”
The Canes again played without injured defenseman Tony DeAngelo, who has practiced and should return in the next few games -- possibly Friday against Washington at PNC Arena. Defenseman Brendan Smith was back in the lineup after missing 10 games when he suffered a fractured skull blocking a shot on Feb. 20 at Pittsburgh.
Canes forward Jordan Martinook left the game in pain Thursday after an injury. Brind’Amour did not have an update after the game but said, “It didn’t look good.”
Kallgren, 25, spent last season in the Swedish Hockey League and was with the Toronto Marlies in the AHL this season before being called up by the Leafs with Jack Campbell injured and Petr Mrazek struggling.
The Canes had last played Sunday, losing at Pittsburgh. Another scheduling quirk had a three-day gap between games — the Canes host the Capitals on Friday and New York Rangers on Sunday.
This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 9:42 PM.
