Maple Leafs vs Oilers: Nylander Hits 300 as Toronto Routs Edmonton 7-2

Maple Leafs vs Oilers: a 7-2 statement in Edmonton

The Maple Leafs vs Oilers opener of Toronto's western road trip was supposed to be a stress test for a blue line with three defencemen on injured reserve. It turned into the Leafs' most complete game of the season. Toronto won 7-2 at Rogers Place on Oct. 24, William Nylander scored twice to reach 300 career NHL goals, and Anthony Stolarz stopped 30 of 32 shots against one of the hottest teams in the Western Conference.

The win is Toronto's fourth in a row and moves the Leafs to 7-4-2. Edmonton came in 8-1-1 on a three-game winning streak and left 8-2-1. Seven different Leafs scored: Jack Roslovic, Auston Matthews, Troy Stecher, Nylander (twice), Zack MacEwen and Vinni Lettieri.

Leon Draisaitl scored both Edmonton goals, his NHL-leading 11th and 12th, and Connor McDavid picked up two assists to stretch his season-opening point streak to 11 games. But for most of the night, the best players in the building were held to the outside, and that is the part Jim Hiller will care about.

How the goals came

Toronto took control early in the second period and pulled away in the third. Here is the scoring sequence as recorded in the game summaries.

Roslovic was credited with the opener, an unassisted goal at 14:16 of the first, and it held up as the only goal of the period. The game broke open in a 54-second burst early in the second. Cowan slipped the puck through the legs of Oilers defenceman Ryan Shea and onto Matthews' stick for an open net, and Stecher followed less than a minute later. Draisaitl got one back late in the period, but Nylander's power-play one-timer from the left circle in the third restored the three-goal cushion and took the air out of Rogers Place.

Stolarz was the difference when it mattered

Hiller went with Stolarz over Sergei Bobrovsky for this one, with Bobrovsky dressing as the backup. It looked like the right call by the end of the first period. Edmonton finished with 32 shots on goal, and with McDavid, Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard on the ice there are always a handful of high-danger looks. Stolarz handled them, and only Draisaitl beat him.

He also played the puck well. On a night when the Oilers tried to pin Toronto's patched defence with dump-ins, Stolarz stopped a lot of them behind his own net and started the breakout himself, which cut down the number of hits his defencemen had to absorb. Hiller credited his goalie after the game, telling reporters that when the Leafs did break down, Stolarz "was there," per The Leafs Nation.

Stolarz improves to 4-1-0. Tristan Jarry made 25 saves on 31 shots for Edmonton, which was without Devon Levi after the Oilers placed him on injured reserve before the game.

The blue line held up without three regulars

This was the game the Leafs' depth chart said they should lose. Chris Tanev, Nick Blankenburg and Marshall Rifai are all on injured reserve, and Toronto went into Edmonton with a patched defence group after recalling Dakota Mermis and Cole McWard from the Marlies. We laid out that problem in our story on the Blankenburg injury and the recalls.

Mermis drew into the lineup, playing with Oliver Ekman-Larsson, while Jake McCabe and Darren Raddysh and Morgan Rielly and Stecher formed the other pairs, according to the practice-day report relayed by Pension Plan Puppets. McWard did not play.

Stecher is the story of the week on the back end. His late goal beat the Rangers on Oct. 22, and he added the third goal here. Hiller singled him out post-game. For a depth defenceman, he has been exactly what Toronto needed while the injuries piled up.

McDavid got his points — but not the game

The Leafs did not shut McDavid out, and nobody does. His two assists extend his point streak to 11 games, and Bouchard's two helpers push his streak to eight. Draisaitl now has goals in six straight games.

What Toronto did was keep the Oilers' stars from turning their chances into a comeback. Draisaitl's second goal, a one-timer off a McDavid feed at 16:35 of the third, came on the power play and ended the Leafs' streak of consecutive penalties killed at 30. That penalty kill was one of the few things going right during the slow start, as we noted in our look at the depth signings on the kill. Losing the streak with a four-goal lead is a trade any coach would take.

The Oilers will point to the 54-second burst in the second period as the moment the game got away. From Toronto's side, the more important fact is that Edmonton never got closer than two goals after the first intermission, against a defence missing three regulars.

Depth scoring, again

The scoresheet tells the story of the week. Three of Toronto's seven goals came from MacEwen, Lettieri and Stecher, and Duhaime set up MacEwen's. Gavin McKenna's assist on Lettieri's late goal gave the first overall pick another point on a line with Lettieri and Sissons.

That matters because John Tavares is week-to-week with a lower-body injury and did not travel. The Leafs have had to play forwards above their usual slot since mid-October, and our breakdown of how Toronto covers centre without Tavares is still the template. Easton Cowan, centring a line with Matthews and Roslovic in the practice report, added the primary assist on the Matthews goal and continues to justify the club's refusal to put him in trade talks.

Matthews and Kirill Marchenko each extended their season-opening road point streaks to five games. Matthews' goal leaves him one point short of 800 in his career, so the milestone could come as soon as Calgary.

What it means for the road trip

Before the trip, we set five of eight points as the bar for four games in Edmonton, Calgary, Seattle and Vancouver. Two points in the toughest building of the four puts Toronto ahead of schedule. A win in Calgary on Oct. 26 would mean the Leafs need just one more point from Seattle and Vancouver to clear it.

The caution is the same one that applied before the game: the blue line is six bodies deep, and one more injury puts a Marlies call-up into the top four. Four straight wins do not change the case for John Chayka adding a defenceman, and they should not change his price either. What they do is buy the GM time to make the right deal rather than the desperate one.

What's next

The Leafs move on to Calgary to face the Flames on Monday, Oct. 26, with Bobrovsky expected to get the start. Calgary has won three straight after a slow opening to its season. After that comes Seattle on Oct. 28 and Vancouver on Oct. 31. Track the division race on our NHL standings page and cap details for every Leaf on the contracts page.