Chalk up another moral victory for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

This was a tired Leafs team, playing a back to back game and its fourth in six nights, taking on a rested Capitals team, and you could see in the possession chart that the Leafs hit a bit of a wall around the middle of the contest.

If you had to pick one of the two games the Leafs should’ve won on merit, it’s last night’s game versus Detroit, while a loser point was a fairer result tonight.

That said, the Leafs will be ruing this one, too, given the way it played out. With the Caps’ tying goal coming off a bad bounce with less than a second left to play, the group has to be feeling down on its luck after a run of hard-fought losses in winnable games.

Depending on how you want to look at it, the Leafs have also collected points in three of their last four.

The Leafs opened the scoring in this one (for once) after a good defensive read by Morgan Rielly to close down and get in the lane for a shot block preventing a sure goal for Alex Ovechkin. Daniel Winnik broke the other way, won a puck battle in the neutral zone, and fooled Braden Holtby on his short/glove side with a shot off the rush down the right wing.

Winnik left the game injured shortly thereafter, as his knee buckled beneath him in a fall along the boards. Winnik didn’t return to the game, but the early diagnosis is promising: it appears to be not as bad as initially feared.

Babcock says the Winnik injury isn't as serious as it looked. Could be available in Dallas on Tuesday. — Jonas Siegel (@jonassiegel) November 8, 2015

The Capitals tied the game early in the second period on an Alex Ovechkin backdoor powerplay goal. Nazem Kadri was in the box for interference on Justin Williams, a call that might’ve made some sense as a holding penalty, if anything — Williams was still in possession of the puck. Froese and Polak were maybe a bit late to identify Ovechkin sneaking down to the back post, but it wasn’t terribly defended and the pass didn’t get through cleanly; despite Polak getting a foot on the cross crease feed, the puck redirected and was knocked in by the backhand of Ovechkin.

The Leafs took the lead for a second time early in the third period with a powerplay goal of their own. Forgoing the four-forward approach, instead sending out both Rielly and Gardiner, yielded some good puck movement, with Rielly passing to Lupul for a redirect in the slot before James van Riemsdyk tucked away the rebound.

It raises the question: With the Leafs lack of offensive weaponry up front, is a four-forward approach the best use of the Leafs’ assets? Further, while Babcock has made it clear he wants Morgan Rielly focusing his development on the defensive end first, does it make sense to have games like Friday’s versus Detroit where the Leafs’ leading point producer (Rielly) gets zero time (and just 34 seconds tonight) on the man advantage?

Morgan Rielly just had one hell of a week with one goal, four assists, 12 shots on goal in four games. Still inside the top 10 in point scoring among defencemen through 14 games, the evolution of a special young player continues.

The Leafs were under siege in the final ten minutes of this game, but a great effort on a minute-long 5 on 3 penalty kill with seven minutes to go had everyone thinking it just might be the Leafs’ night, especially after a would-be second Ovechkin goal was correctly reversed on a coaches challenge due to goaltender interference. Toronto allowed just one shot on goal in the 5 on 3 portion of the penalty kill and just two total over the length of the kill. Pretty impressive that Byron Froese played nearly six minutes shorthanded tonight in just his eighth NHL game.

The good effort came undone with 0.8 seconds left on the game clock. After the game, Babcock laughed about his team doing what he said not to do on the final play, but there’s also some dumb luck involved here. The puck bounded off of Oveckin at the near side, hit a wide-open Niklas Backstrom in the chest, and fell just right for him on the far post. Backstrom proceeded to get half a shot off where a full connection probably results in a Reimer pad/glove save, as the puck looped fortuitously over Reimer and into the net.

The Leafs carried the play in the three-on-three overtime but were toothless in both OT and the shootout, falling to an eventual Ovechkin winner despite a good showing from Reimer in the skills competition.

Said Babcock of Reimer: “I sure think he’s been good. He’s giving us a chance. He gets points, so he gets to play.”

Notes

– This was only the second time in 14 games the Leafs have managed to score first. The Leafs puck pursuit was excellent in the first half of this game, but not unexpectedly it fell off as tired legs set in.

– Nazem Kadri again led the team in shots with seven, taking him up to 60 shots on the season with a grand total of one goal. Kadri is third in the NHL in shots on goal.

Again, this was a good game from Kadri who had the best possession numbers on the team, but the bad luck bug continues to affect him as he hit a goal post in the first period. He also had a great rush a few shifts later where he beat the defender clean driving wide but couldn’t solve Holtby. Can’t help but notice goalies are reading his extended windup, and he’s got to do more to disguise his release with different timing or screens; it’d be nice to see him work in a snap shot instead of the long-load wrister every time. Regardless, if you’ve got Kadri’s skill and your shot production has you top three in the entire league, the goals will surely come.

– Brad Boyes played six minutes at even strength tonight, and the lowest overall TOI amount of the season for any Leafs player. PA Parenteau played 12 minutes and change and didn’t generate a shot on goal. With Arcobello in the minors, the one-year flyers/draft pick currency signings aren’t panning out in the early going.

– The JvR-Kadri-Komarov line has been consistently effective in terms of controlling play; the fourth line, since Froese began centering it, has had some good nights, and the third line of Spaling, Lupul and Winnik continues to be reliable. If there’s a line that’s lagging right now, it’s the Bozak, Matthias and Parenteau unit. None of these players are getting much done at even strength — Parenteau has a few PP points — and they’re struggling in the possession game in the last few outings. It starts with the centerman, as Bozak was guilty of multiple turnovers and bobbled passes in an ugly outing Saturday night. Many nights, Bozak has found himself third among centers in TOI behind Kadri and Spaling, and tonight he only played a few seconds more than Froese for the lowest TOI among the Leafs’ Cs. Parenteau, for his part, isn’t moving well out there and looks behind the pace. Matthias hasn’t played poorly and is contributing on the penalty kill, but he’s not in a good situation on that line at the moment and has just two points to his name through fourteen games.

Matthias may get a shot in a different spot if Winnik is out for any length of time.

– 26 minutes of ice time for Dion Phaneuf in a back to back is the sort of thing I thought Babcock was trying to get away from — and he largely has — but Phaneuf came out of it unscathed, as he had a pretty clean night defensively.

Scoring Chance Location Chart

Shot Attempt Location Chart

Shot Location Chart

Maple Leafs vs. Capitals – Leafs Player Boxscore Stats

PLAYER G A P +/- PIM S HITS BKS FO% PP TOI SH TOI TOI M. Hunwick 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 0 - 0:00 5:13 24:28:00 D. Phaneuf 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 2 - 3:50 3:56 26:15:00 P. Parenteau 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 - 1:24 0:00 12:50 N. Spaling 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 1 39% 0:00 3:14 20:32 J. Lupul 0 1 1 0 0 2 0 0 - 3:43 0:00 14:36 J. van Riemsdyk 1 0 1 0 0 2 1 0 - 3:43 0:00 17:29 S. Matthias 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 - 0:00 2:23 15:18 D. Winnik 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 - 0:00 0:00 2:07 B. Boyes 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 - 1:32 0:00 7:43 S. Harrington 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 1 - 0:00 1:02 12:19 M. Grabner 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 - 0:00 5:16 18:27 T. Bozak 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 3 38% 1:32 0:00 15:55 N. Kadri 0 0 0 0 4 7 1 0 46% 3:09 0:20 20:09 M. Rielly 0 2 2 0 0 2 0 4 - 0:34 3:03 21:16 R. Polak 0 0 0 0 2 1 8 1 - 0:51 5:29 19:56 L. Komarov 0 0 0 -1 2 2 5 0 0% 3:43 1:55 20:07 J. Gardiner 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 - 1:33 0:00 17:07 B. Froese 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 40% 0:41 5:40 15:47

Maple Leafs vs. Capitals – Leafs Player Possession Stats