Maple Leafs vs Sabres: Marchenko Hat Trick Wasted in 5-4 OT Loss

Maple Leafs vs Sabres: a 4-2 lead becomes a 5-4 overtime loss

The Maple Leafs vs Sabres game on Oct. 15 at Scotiabank Arena should have been Kirill Marchenko's night. He scored three times, the fifth hat trick of his NHL career and his first in a Toronto sweater, in his 300th NHL game. Toronto led 4-2 after 40 minutes. Then Buffalo scored twice in a little over two minutes midway through the third, and Owen Power ended it at 3:14 of overtime. Final: Sabres 5, Maple Leafs 4.

The single point leaves Toronto at 3-3-2 after eight games and opens a homestand on the wrong foot. It also came with two pieces of news that matter more than the standings: John Tavares left early in the third period after a collision with Buffalo's Josh Norris, and No. 1 overall pick Gavin McKenna played just 6:36 and never took a shift after the midpoint of the second period.

Buffalo, which arrived at 3-3-1 like Toronto, moved to 4-3-1. Jack Quinn had two goals and two assists, and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 26 saves. Sergei Bobrovsky made 29 for the Leafs.

How the scoring went

The scoring summary tells the story of a game Toronto controlled for two periods and lost in the third. Here is every goal, from the NHL.com recap and the CBS Sports box score:

PeriodTimeTeamScorerScore1st2:24TORAuston Matthews1-0 TOR1st3:35BUFJack Quinn1-11st13:10 (PP)TORKirill Marchenko2-1 TOR2nd2:41BUFJack Quinn2-22nd11:13TORKirill Marchenko3-2 TOR2nd16:51TORKirill Marchenko4-2 TOR3rd10:05BUFDennis Gilbert4-3 TOR3rd12:16BUFMattias Samuelsson4-4OT3:14BUFOwen Power5-4 BUF

Two of Buffalo's five goals came from defencemen shooting from distance in the third period. Gilbert's point shot beat a screened Bobrovsky, and Samuelsson's shot went over Bobrovsky's right shoulder 2:11 later. Power's winner came off a saucer pass from Quinn through the neutral zone and a wrist shot from the top of the left circle. Three defencemen scored for Buffalo; that is a structure problem for Toronto, not a goaltending one.

Kirill Marchenko's hat trick and the new second line

Before the game, Jim Hiller broke up the line that had Marchenko on Auston Matthews' right side for his first seven Toronto games. William Nylander moved up to the top line with Matthews and Jack Roslovic, and Marchenko joined Tavares and Nick Paul on a rebuilt second line, per TSN and NHL.com's projected lineups. It worked immediately.

The power-play goal at 13:10 of the first was a between-the-legs finish off a Tavares feed in the slot, with Darren Raddysh also assisting. At 11:13 of the second, Tavares poked a puck loose along the boards and Marchenko shot high to the glove side from the top of the left circle. At 16:51, he one-timed a Colton Sissons pass from behind the net. Tavares had assists on the first two.

That matters beyond one night. Toronto paid a lot for Marchenko on Sept. 29 — Matthew Knies went to Columbus in the six-player deal, and a six-year extension at a $12.5 million cap hit starts next season (our breakdown of what the Marchenko contract does to the cap covers the math). A player on that number has to be able to drive a line without Matthews. On Thursday, he did.

Bobrovsky, the shot count and where the game turned

Bobrovsky stopped 29 of 34 shots; Luukkonen stopped 26 of 30. Over 63 minutes that is close to an even game on volume, which is the problem with the third-period collapse — Toronto was not hanging on against a barrage. It had a two-goal lead in a game it was playing on fairly even terms and gave it back in a 2:11 span.

Bobrovsky entered the night at 1-2-1 with a .907 save percentage through four starts, per The Leafs Nation. Neither of the tying goals was clean: one through a screen, one from the point over his shoulder. A goalie Toronto acquired to win games like this one will want the Samuelsson goal back. But the larger failure was in front of him: two shots from the blue line got through traffic within 2:11, and no Leaf got a stick or a body in the lane on either.

The other turn was personnel. By the time Buffalo scored at 10:05, Toronto was down Tavares and playing McKenna zero minutes. That left Hiller rolling a reduced forward group in the most important stretch of the night.

Auston Matthews keeps scoring

Matthews opened the scoring 2:24 in, his goal in a third straight game. Per NHL.com, it extended his point streak to six games, with six goals and seven assists in that span. His 13 points through eight games are the strongest early-season evidence that the knee is no longer a story.

With Nylander on his wing again, the top line produced the first goal and then largely played even with Buffalo's top group. The concern was never the top line. It was everything after it, and on Thursday the second line looked fixed right up until Tavares went down.

The John Tavares injury

Early in the third, Tavares collided with Norris and stayed down for an extended stretch before leaving with help from Jake McCabe and a trainer, according to several reports from the arena. Hiller had no update after the game. Reports differ on the details — some describe Tavares keeping weight off his right leg — and nothing official had been announced on the morning of Oct. 16. Anything beyond "undisclosed injury" is guesswork until the team says otherwise.

The timing is rough. Toronto is already without forwards Max Domi and Dakota Joshua, both on long-term injured reserve, and defenceman Chris Tanev, who the team ruled week-to-week with an upper-body injury on Oct. 15. Our look at what Tanev's absence means for the defence still applies. Losing Tavares on top of that would take out the player who just set up two of the three goals on the line that finally worked.

Hours before puck drop, Toronto also acquired centre Aatu Räty from Vancouver for forwards Jacob Quillan and Brandon Buhr. Räty was assigned to the AHL Marlies, but he is the obvious call-up if the Leafs need a middle-six centre in a hurry.

The McKenna benching and the third-period collapse

McKenna's last shift came with 9:40 left in the second period, and he did not play again in the second, the third or overtime. Hiller told reporters afterward, per Daily Faceoff, that a run of penalties in the second kept McKenna on the bench for a long stretch, that he then decided not to send him back out, and that he "probably should've" put him out at the start of the third. He called it his mistake.

Credit Hiller for owning it. But the result was a short bench in the third period of a one-goal game, which is exactly when a coach wants four lines, not three. McKenna entered the night with five points (two goals, three assists) in seven games, averaging 15:00 a night. He was not the problem.

Nor is this the first blown lead. Toronto led Vegas 3-0 on Oct. 8 and needed 40 Bobrovsky saves to escape with a point (recap here). Two games with multi-goal leads in eight have produced two points instead of four. That is the gap between 3-3-2 and 4-2-2.

What's next for the Leafs

The homestand continues Saturday, Oct. 17, against the New York Islanders at 7 p.m., then the San Jose Sharks on Monday, Oct. 19. The first questions are medical: what the Tavares diagnosis is, and whether Räty comes up from the Marlies. The second is whether Hiller keeps Marchenko on the Tavares-Paul line or has to rebuild it again.

The third is McKenna, whose ninth NHL game would come Saturday if he dresses. A tenth appearance on Monday would burn the first year of his entry-level contract, as our explainer on the nine-game window lays out. After 6:36 on Thursday, that decision has become a lot more interesting. Follow the race on our standings page.