Washington Capitals score early to beat Toronto Maple Leafs 4-1

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Washington Capitals score early to beat Toronto Maple Leafs 4-1. Here is the summary of the game played on Tuesday, April 4, 2017

GAME SUMMARY         |           EVENT SUMMARY        |           FACEOFF SUMMARY

ON THE SCORESHEET

Mitch Marner scored Toronto’s lone goal on the power play at 18:52 of the third period. Marner has points (2-2-4) in four consecutive games.

James van Riemsdyk had the primary assist on Marner’s third period goal and has points (3-1-4) in four consecutive games.

Tyler Bozak recorded the secondary assist on Marner’s power play goal. Bozak has 18 points (4 goals, 14 assists) in 22 games against Metropolitan Division opponents this season.

Curtis McElhinney made 34 saves in the loss. The Maple Leafs are 4-3-0 when McElhinney makes 30-39 saves this season.

SHOTS FIRED

The Maple Leafs were outshot by the Capitals by a 38-28 margin in all situations and by a 31-21 margin at 5-on-5.

Washington had a 58-55 lead in shot attempts in all situations and a 46-44 lead in shot attempts at 5-on-5.

James van Riemsdyk led the Maple Leafs with four shots on goal.

Morgan Rielly registered a game-high nine shot attempts.

ROAD SCHOLARS

The Maple Leafs are 20-11-7 at home this season and 6-10-1 in the second leg of back-to-backs.

Toronto’s all-time record is 60-67-10-4 in 141 games against the Capitals and 37-25-6-1 in games played in Toronto. 

Toronto is 29-15-7 against the Eastern Conference this season and 11-7-4 against the Metropolitan Division.

Tonight’s attendance was 19,415.

The Maple Leafs continue their final homestand of the season on April 6 vs. Tampa Bay.

MAPLE LEAFS LEADERS

RECORD WHEN…

The Maple Leafs were 2-for-3 on the penalty kill and 1-for-4 on the power play tonight. Toronto is 11-11-8 when allowing one power play goal and 19-13-6 when scoring a power play goal this season.

Toronto is 10-19-6 when their opponent scores first this season

The Maple Leafs are 3-17-3 when trailing after one period and 3-20-2 when trailing after two periods.

Toronto has a 26-13-8 record when outshot by their opponent.

The Maple Leafs are 9-7-2 on Tuesday nights.

OF NOTE…

The Maple Leafs won 71 percent (15 won, 6 lost) of their offensive zone faceoffs tonight.

Brian Boyle left tonight’s game (upper body) and did not return.

Tyler Bozak was 6-for-6 in the faceoff circle when matched up against Washington centre Jay Beagle.

Nazem Kadri won 80 percent (4 won, 1 lost) of his defensive zone faceoffs in tonight’s game and was 7-for-12 (58%) in the faceoff circle against Washington’s Nicklas Backstrom.

William Nylander skated in his 100th career NHL game.

UPCOMING GAMES:

Thursday, April 6 vs. Tampa Bay Lightning, 7:30 p.m. (TSN 4, TSN 1050)

Saturday, April 8 vs. Pittsburgh Penguins, 7:00 p.m. (Hockey Night in Canada, TSN 1050)

Sunday, April 9 vs. Columbus Blue Jackets, 6:00 p.m. (Sportsnet, FAN 590)

POSTGAME QUOTES:

HEAD COACH MIKE BABCOCK

On wrapping up a back-to-back tonight:

That’s the way the schedule is. I thought they played good and I didn’t think we did. I thought they had energy and we didn’t have a whole bunch. We had a push at the start of the second period, I thought we were coming pretty good, had the power play and took a bad penalty on the power play. Then they scored on the power play on a missed assignment there and I didn’t think we had much after that, to be honest.

On losing Boyle:

Obviously, back-to-back, you’d like to have that pro centre. In the end, when you look at the game, I thought they came out and dictated play right from the get-go. I didn’t think we had a whole lot of answers, to be honest with you. I thought they were a good team that was hungry, that was competitive, that won battles. They won more battles than we did and had more energy.

On Boyle’s status:

I just talked to the doctor. They’ll reassess in the morning and let me know what’s going on. Upper body injury.

On facing Washington on a back-to-back:

I don’t want to make excuses for anything, I would have obviously liked to have played them tomorrow and then have a measuring stick. To me we didn’t measure anything, we didn’t find out how good they were because we didn’t push enough. To me it was a one-sided game, they were better than us from start to finish. Like I said, we had eight minutes or something there at the start of the second, but they were bigger, stronger, faster, quicker, more organized.

CONNOR CARRICK (6 SHOT ATTEMPTS)

On Washington’s speed and physicality:

They had good sticks, they had good speed throughout the neutral zone. Every night you talk about the importance of slowing them down, playing in their end for a bit so they’re not in the fresher part of their shift, skating downhill on you. They were able to kind of tilt the ice their way and the game gets more uphill for you as a defenceman when they’re able to do that. It’s the same thing every team talks about – go get the other team’s D-men. It’s a hunt-the-defencemen type of mentality for all 30 teams.

On fatigue playing a role in tonight’s game:

There’s no excuses. I don’t know what their schedule looked like the last two times we played them and I don’t think anybody cares. For us, there’s always more difficult parts, more demanding parts of your schedule. That’s what they pay you for, they pay you to win the hard games. The easy games are when you’re feeling it, you’re feeling good and your execution is strong. You’re playing those games for free. You’re on the payroll to be a pro and maybe we didn’t handle it with as much success as we would have liked.

On having a chance to rest prior to facing Tampa Bay:

It seems like you try to get your eight hours, play a game, eight hours, play a game. It’ll be a nice break tomorrow and we’ll be charged up for Thursday.

On playing against Washington:

There’s a level of execution they play with, a level of energy and a level of physicality that I think is going to be a staple of the teams that have made the playoffs now and are going to have success. It’s our job to answer that and a lot of nights we have this year, that’s why we’re in the position we’re in. Going forward it’s about consistency and being able to bring it every night and give yourself a chance to win.

MITCH MARNER (1 GOAL)

On tonight’s game:

Obviously, they came ready to play. I think the first 10 we really needed to push back hard and it took us a little bit of time to get our legs under us. We just learn from these moments and we’ve got to be ready to play our next game.

On Washington’s physical play:

They got on our [defence] hard. We needed to lay off a little bit and get skin through the neutral zone. Like I said, we’re just going to learn from this game and be ready to play the next one.

On the lesson from tonight’s game:

No matter whether you’ve played the night before or not, just come in ready to play. At the start of the game we needed to get skin on their players, lay off our D and give them more time to make plays. I think later on in the game we got that down more but we’ve got to start from the get-go.

On if the team felt as though the game got out of reach:

I think that’s the thing about our team is we never feel like that. No matter the score or time, we always feel like we can still come back and battle. I think that’s what going to make us a deadly team is how hard we compete no matter the score and no matter the time.

On the mindset heading into the final three games of the season:

Just the same as all year – do or die. We need to make sure we’re coming in ready to play for these next three games no matter what the standings say or whether we’re in or not. We’ve just got to be ready to play the next couple of games. We’ve got to come in with a do or die mentality.

CURTIS McELHINNEY (34 SAVES)

On tonight’s game:

We knew those guys were going to come hard. They’re at a critical point in their season right now, they want to build towards finishing first. They played a pretty solid game all-around. They just took advantage of some of our mistakes.

On facing Washington’s power play:

That unit has been together for a while and there’s a couple of key guys on it. They make some great plays. They’re able to make something out of nothing sometimes. When you get down 2-0 in the second, that was the knife in the back there.

On Toronto’s response after the first period:

I think after the first we wanted to come out hard in the second. We got some things going there and just weren’t able to generate any goals off it. Obviously, giving up the power play goal kind of took the wind out of us a little bit.

JAMES van RIEMSDYK (1 ASSIST)

On preparing for the final three games of the season:

Obviously, we know the schedule is what it is at this time of year. There’s lots of games in a short period of time. All of the teams are dealing with it so you’ve just got to prepare yourself as best you can and do what you can to do your job out there. We have three big games coming up now and we need some results.

On facing Washington:

They, like you said, are one of the top teams in the standings on our side of the conference. You’d have to think that any playoff team is going to have to go through them. They came out playing really well and established their game. We didn’t really give much up so they played a really good game tonight, I thought.

On losing Boyle in the first period:

He’s been great since he’s been here. That veteran presence – he does a lot of little things right, makes some good plays and has provided us a different element there. He’s done a great job; we’ll see what happens with him.