A much better Game 2 for the Pittsburgh Penguins as they went on the road for the Detroit Red Wings’ home opener and came away with a 6-3 victory against a potential rival for a playoff spot. Once again the Penguins gave up an early goal but, unlike against the Rangers on Wednesday, they didn’t let the game run away from them and notched the next four goals to chase Red Wings starting goaltender Ville Husso in the second period. Joel Blomqvist recorded his first NHL win with a tidy 29 save performance, Anthony Beauvillier scored his first and second goals for Pittsburgh, and the power play went 1/2 with a goal from Erik Karlsson that secured Evgeni Malkin’s 800th career assist. All in all, a positive night to thoroughly cleanse their putrid home opener.
The Penguins’ early season tour of the Atlantic Division continues tonight with a visit to Toronto for the Maple Leafs’ home opener. Like their visitors for tonight, Toronto has opened the season with a 1-1 record: they made Canadiens netminder Sam Montembault look excellent with a 48 save, 4.03 goals saved above average performance in Montreal’s 1-0 win on opening night, but then made Jakob Markstrom look very underwhelming as the Leafs ran out to a three goal lead in the first 15 minutes and ended up pumping four goals on 22 shots past the Devils starter in a comfortable 4-2 win in New Jersey. Tonight starts a relatively relaxing nine-day, four-game homestand for Toronto, with visits from Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, the Rangers, and Tampa Bay.
This is a critical season for the Maple Leafs. Since Toronto’s recent stretch of returning to the postseason began with the 2016-17 season, the Leafs have the third-best record in the NHL, behind Boston and Tampa Bay (and three spots ahead of Pittsburgh). However, unlike their peers, they have lacked for postseason success as they have just one playoff series win in the last eight seasons, and last year they were eliminated by a familiar foil in the Bruins. You have to go all the way back to 2002 to find the last time Toronto made it to the final four, and back to 1967, the last year pre-expansion-era, for their last Stanley Cup, let alone their last Cup Finals appearance.
The path appears to be paved for the Leafs, at least in the context of interdivisional intangibles. The Florida Panthers won the Cup last season, and history has shown that champions tend to regress the following season. The Bruins and Lightning are both in their swan songs, even if they’re not completely out of the playoff discussion quite yet. The up-and-comers in Buffalo, Detroit, and Ottawa haven’t inspired much confidence that they’ve come up enough. Add in the relative weakness of the Metropolitan Division, and the only thing stopping Toronto from taking the next step forward are themselves. They have largely exhausted their long-building prospect pool and the ones who had been prospects are in their primes and mainly their key contributors now.
The big question for the Maple Leafs is the same as it is for a lot of teams: is their goaltending good enough? Last season Toronto allowed the second-most goals against of any playoff team, and likewise the team save percentage was second-worst of the sixteen playoff teams and in the bottom third of the NHL overall. Currently their expected starter Joseph Woll is on injured reserve through October 16 as he recovers from a lower-body injury, so it is up to the tandem of the newly-acquired Anthony Stolarz and rookie Dennis Hildeby (who won his first NHL game against New Jersey) to hold the fort until Woll returns. It’s not a bad plan as Stolarz was arguably the League’s best backup last season as he and Sergei Bobrovsky were the Jennings trophy runners-up en route to lifting the Stanley Cup with the Panthers last season. If the goaltending is markedly improved for the Leafs this season, they should make a strong case for a deep playoff run in spring.
