Toronto Maple Leafs lose in a shootout to New Jersey Devils

(Photo by Kevin Sousa/Icon Sportswire)

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Toronto Maple Leafs lose 5-4 to New Jersey Devils in a shootout. Main highlights of the game are given below. 

ON THE SCORESHEET
–    Auston Matthews opened the scoring for the Maple Leafs with a goal at 10:33 of the first period. The Maple Leafs have scored first in six of their last seven games.
–    Nazem Kadri scored for Toronto on the power play at 13:31 of the first period. He has four points (1-3-4) over his last four games.
–    Auston Matthews added his second goal of the game at 18:52 of the first period. Tonight is the second multi-goal game and third multi-point game of Matthews’ NHL career.
–    Matt Martin scored at 9:26 of the second period for the Maple Leafs. Martin’s goal was his first as a member of the Maple Leafs.
–    Zach Hyman registered a pair of assists in the first period to establish a new single-game high for assists. Tonight is the second multi-point game of Hyman’s NHL career.
–    William Nylander picked up an assist on Kadri’s first period goal. Nylander now has 9 power play points this season.
–    Auston Matthews recorded the primary assist on Kadri’s goal. Six of Matthews’ eight assists have been primary assists.
–    Connor Brown picked up his fifth assist of the season on Matthews’ second goal. The Maple Leafs are 4-0-1 when Brown records a point.
–    Nikita Soshnikov registered an assist on Martin’s second period goal. The assist is Soshnikov’s first road point this season.
–    Nikita Zaitsev had a secondary assist – his eighth assist of the season – on Martin’s goal in the second period.

IN THE SHOOTOUT
–    Auston Matthews – Stopped (2016-17: 1/2)
–    Mitch Marner – Stopped (2016-17: 0/2)
–    Nikita Soshnikov – Stopped (2016-17: 0/1)
–    Jhonas Enroth (2/3)

SHOTS FIRED
–    The Maple Leafs outshot the Devils by a 31-30 margin.
–    Toronto outshot New Jersey 5-1 in overtime. The teams registered 8 shots each in the first period. The Devils had a 10-8 edge in shots in the second period and an 11-10 advantage in the third period.
–    Toronto was out-attempted by New Jersey, 53-52.           
–    Auston Matthews and Connor Brown led the Maple Leafs in shots (4).
–    Auston Matthews led the Maple Leafs with 7 shot attempts.

BACK TO BACK
–    The Maple Leafs are now 1-5-4 on the road this season.
–    Toronto’s all-time record is 67-39-20-9 in 135 games against the New Jersey franchise and 23-23-15-5 in 66 games played on the road.
–    The Maple Leafs are 0-3-1 in the second leg of back-to-backs.

OF NOTE…
–    The Maple Leafs are 5-1-2 when leading after one period and 7-1-4 when leading after two periods.
–    Toronto is 7-3-3 when scoring first.
–    The Maple Leafs are 5-0-4 when scoring four or more goals.
–    Connor Carrick had the highest 5-on-5 shot-attempt percentage of all Maple Leafs skaters at 55 percent.
–    Jhonas Enroth made 26 saves in regulation and overtime.
–    Jake Gardiner led the Maple Leafs in TOI (25:28).
–    Jake Gardiner and Morgan Rielly led the Maple Leafs in shifts (35)
–    Matt Hunwick and Morgan Rielly led the Maple Leafs with 2 blocked shots.
–    Matt Martin led the Maple Leafs in hits (2).
–    Ben Smith won 67 percent (6 won, 3 lost) of his faceoffs tonight.

UPCOMING GAMES:
–    Saturday, Nov. 26 vs. Washington Capitals, 7:00 p.m. (Hockey Night in Canada, FAN 590)
–    Tuesday, Nov. 29 at Edmonton Oilers, 9:00 p.m. (TSN 4, TSN 1050)
–    Wednesday, Nov. 30 at Calgary Flames, 8:30 p.m. (Sportsnet, FAN 590)
–    Saturday, Dec. 3 at Vancouver Canucks, 7:00 p.m. (Hockey Night in Canada, TSN 1050)
–    Wednesday, Dec. 7 vs. Minnesota Wild, 7:30 p.m. (Sportsnet, FAN 590)

POSTGAME QUOTES

MIKE BABCOCK POSTGAME: NOVEMBER 23, 2016

On giving up the lead in tonight’s game:
It’s disappointing. You came here and you wanted to find a way to win a game and we weren’t able to do it. It’s evident how young we are. You’re up 3-0 and you come out and the next two plays you make in the second period are basically free gifts. We rim the puck and the d-man follows it out of the zone and they’re underneath us. Then with 11 seconds left in the penalty kill, instead of dumping it in and getting a change we turn it over and they go the other way. Those are things you’ve got to learn how to win. You’ve got to learn to respect the opposition and understand as a group you’ve got to prepare in between periods and get ready for the next one. You know the other team is going to get ready. That part is disappointing. Our first 20 games, we’re .500 and have 20 points. It gives us a chance, which is real positive for our group. We’ve got a young group that’s going to get better. It’s very evident when you watch us play we’ve got lots to work on.

JHONAS ENROTH POSTGAME: NOVEMBER 23, 2016

On making his first start since Oct. 30:
I think I felt alright. The first period was pretty good. The second, obviously it was a tough start for us. The first three minutes there they score three goals, but after that I think I settled down and played alright the rest of the game. I would have liked to have had the fourth goal back but that’s hockey I guess.

On if he felt interfered with on the fourth goal:
That was my initial thought but I haven’t really seen it on the video after. I thought it was a little bit close to me, but we’ll see… I thought I felt something, I was a little bit off-balance but, like I said, I haven’t seen the replay yet so I can’t really say anything.

On if he felt pressure to play well after a long stretch between games:
Sure, but I’ve been in this position before and you try not to think about that too much. You just try to live in the moment and not think too much ahead of yourself.

MATT MARTIN POSTGAME: NOVEMBER 23, 2016

On scoring his first goal as a Maple Leaf:
It feels good. I don’t know – how many games have we played, 20? To finally get one was a little bit of a weight off the shoulders. We need to be better as a team and as a line, especially in a 3-0 game going into the second period. There’s no reason or no way we should be giving up that lead. So, we’ve got to learn from it.

On preventing letdowns at the beginning of periods:
I think it’s just preparing yourself a bit at intermission. You come in feeling good about yourself and being up 3-0 on the road. They’re feeling a lot different in their room. We talked about it, they were going to come out hard and we didn’t have a good enough response. It’s a bit of mental toughness but it’s also understanding the game and the situation and playing the right way.

On being part of a New York Islanders team that stopped giving up leads:
I think it’s an attitude thing. I think we lost 13 games in the final minute of the third period on the Island and the next year we won a bunch of games in the third period. I don’t think it’s a personnel thing, I think you just get that confidence and that belief that you’re going to win. On the flip side, when you’re losing games like that you start to feel like you’re going to lose all of them. You get big leads and the other team comes out and pushes, they score one and you start to feel it a little bit. We’ve just got to get that out of our heads and understand we’re a good team and understand we need to play the right way. In a 3-0 game on the road we need to come out and push the tempo of the game. We know they’re going to have a pushback; we need to respond.

AUSTON MATTHEWS POSTGAME: NOVEMBER 23, 2016

On snapping a scoring drought:
It feels good to get that monkey off the back kind of feeling. Hopefully we can keep it rolling.

On the need to improve defensive zone play:
For sure, I think we kind of – like I said, it’s kind of a normality so we’ve got to clean that up, especially defensively. We can’t be cheating for offence; we’ve got to play the same way we played to get the lead. That’s definitely something we’ll fix. Obviously we’re a young team but that’s no excuse for us to do that.

On his emotions after scoring:
It just felt great. Hyman was pretty much as excited about that goal as he was with his against Philadelphia. It’s good to see. All the boys were pretty happy on the bench and everything. It’s a pretty good feeling.

JAMES van RIEMSDYK POSTGAME: NOVEMBER 23, 2016

On tonight’s game:
We didn’t really stick to our game plan in the second period and let them come back into the game there. Then it was a dogfight from there. In the shootout they were opportunistic and buried on their chance.

On learning to play with a lead:
Yeah, it’s just playing the same no matter what the score is. You can’t give teams a chance to come back into it because they’re going to. Again, especially like that, we knew they were going to come out hard in the second period after the way the first one went. Unfortunately, it let a point slip away.

On getting momentum back after it slips away:
You’ve got to have that same mindset no matter what the score is. We’ve got to play more consistent shift-to-shift no matter what the score is and I think we’ll continue to learn and get better at that.

On improving the D-zone play after the second period:
We know exactly what we’re supposed to do in all the different situations of the game, so it’s just a matter of executing and going out there and doing our job.   

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