The Toronto Maple Leafs intend to cut their losses at two straight Tuesday night when they host the Nashville Predators.
After winning their season opener against the Montreal Canadiens, the Maple Leafs dropped back-to-back contests to the Detroit Red Wings.
Toronto lost 3-2 at home on Monday afternoon when Detroit’s Mason Appleton scored at 19:15 of the third period. The Maple Leafs had overcome a 2-0 third-period deficit to tie.
The Predators are coming off a 4-1 victory over the Ottawa Senators on Monday afternoon that opened their four-game road trip. Nashville is 2-0-1 to start the season and has looked better than expected.
The Maple Leafs, who lost 6-3 at Detroit on Saturday, outshot the Red Wings 40-15 on Monday.
“It was a good solid 60 minutes in my opinion,” Toronto coach Craig Berube said. “I thought we controlled the play with plenty of opportunities to score. It didn’t go in enough, that’s the bottom line.”
Toronto’s top prospect, 20-year-old Easton Cowan, made his NHL debut on Monday. He played with Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies on the top line and had one shot on goal in 14:05 of playing time.
“It was a fun game to play in,” Cowan said. “Lots of family and friends here, so that meant a lot. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the win. I thought we played a pretty good game though, outshot them. I felt like we had a lot of chances. A little bit of adversity, but we will battle through it.”
Matthews said, “I thought (Cowan) was great. He carries himself with such confidence in himself. The way he plays and competes, I thought he played really well. He made smart plays with the puck.”
Toronto’s Calle Jarnkrok continued his strong start to the season, scoring his third goal.
The Maple Leafs would like to see more aggressive play from William Nylander, whose only goal so far was into an empty net in the opener. He scored a career-high 45 goals last season.
“We do need more out of him,” Berube said. “Willie needs more shots. He doesn’t have enough shots. He needs to attack more. He needs to shoot more. He’s got to get on the inside more.”
Nylander does have three assists this season, two of them in the 5-2 win over Montreal.
The Predators are happy with their goaltender, Juuse Saros, who has started all three games. He made 31 saves at Ottawa, including 12 in the third period.
“He is an elite goaltender for a reason,” said Jonathan Marchessault, who scored twice for Nashville. “He’s giving us a chance to win every night, and that’s the beauty of having quality goaltending like that. I mean, we’re definitely lucky to have him. He was unbelievable (Monday), especially in the third period.”
Nashville center Ryan O’Reilly, who added a goal in the game, said, “It’s a greasy road win. It wasn’t pretty, but we stuck with it. When things weren’t going well, we kept fighting.”
Predators coach Andrew Brunette expressed a similar sentiment.
“Gutsy performance from our group,” he said. “I thought it was a hard road game. It was kind of a little bizarre with all the penalties and a lot of the puck dropping and so kind of took a little bit of momentum away on both sides at different times. But I loved our third period. I loved most of our game.”
