Maple Leafs hold on late to edge out bitter rival Canadiens

The Toronto Maple Leafs had to dig deep to survive a Canadiens power play with three minutes to go but managed to hold steady and hold off Montreal for a tight 3-2 win.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Edmonton Oilers played so poorly Saturday afternoon in Buffalo, they lost twice.

In a bizarre, rarely seen moment after Owen Power’s overtime winner for Buffalo, the goal was overturned on an offside review. Meanwhile, both teams — one happy, one sour — had gone to their dressing rooms and begun to undress when word filtered back to the players that they were going to have to return to the ice for the final 20 seconds of overtime and a shootout.

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Goalie Stuart Skinner was half-undressed, his goal pads lying on the floor in front of him. Defenceman Mattias Ekholm was down to his skates. Jerseys and sticks were being packed away.

“Some guys were right down to their gitch, and they had to get dressed again,” said Corey Perry, chuckling. “Guys are looking for sticks, their jerseys. … Everything was all over the place.

“Gave ourselves another chance, I guess.”

Fittingly, the second chance went about as well as the first one for Edmonton, which would lose 3-2 in a shootout to the Sabres.

The Oilers have now grabbed just one of four points from a pair of Eastern Conference strugglers in Columbus and Buffalo, with the fading Pittsburgh Penguins on tap Sunday afternoon. A win in Pittsburgh would salvage the trip at 2-1-1, a pretty good haul for a team that’s muddling through the trade deadline blues.

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Warren Foegele had a goal and an assist on a nice bounce-back effort after he’d taken the blame on a key goal against Columbus. His line with Leon Draisaitl and Ryan McLeod (1-1-2) was by far Edmonton’s best unit.

“It would have been better to get the win, but for myself, I wasn’t happy with the last game and tried to put my foot forward,” said Foegele, who was rumoured on his way out of Edmonton in all the trade deadline tumult over the past three weeks.

“Personally, it’s a little bit less stressful today than it was for the past week,” he said.

Edmonton had a fantastic start — a McLeod goal on the game’s first shift, a 2-0 lead on Foegele’s shorty at the 14:19 mark — but the usually proficient Oilers couldn’t find the next goal that would have stopped the Sabres from hanging around.

“I thought we played a solid game. Maybe gave up a couple too many chances, or looks,” offered Draisaitl, after career game No. 700. “We just couldn’t find that third one to get some insurance. That’s really the game.”

A disjointed Oilers power play went 0-for-3 on six full minutes with the man advantage. That’s the first place we’d begin the search for that third goal that never materialized.

“Yeah, for sure,” Draisaitl agreed. “We can be a lot better.”

“You’ve got to give credit to their goalie (Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen),” offered Perry. “He made the one save on me with his paddle. Stopped Davo (Connor McDavid) on the breakaway … those, most of the time, they go in and we’re not talking about this.”

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Frankly, as art, this game was more spray paint tagger than Rembrandt. It really could have been 7-6 if not for some pretty good goaltending, but scads of high-end opportunities that never even ended in a shot on goal.

It was two teams giving up way too many Grade-A chances, with neither club having the polish or finish around the other’s goal to capitalize. Buffalo hit at least three posts, and McDavid’s 13-game points streak died on a shot over Luukkonen’s glove that rang iron as well.

Edmonton won a whopping 79 per cent of the faceoffs — Sam Carrick was 8-0, and Draisaitl went 16-3 — an area of domination wasted by Edmonton. In the end, however, Edmonton’s scoreless No. 1 unit of McDavid, Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins will be just fine, and the Draisaitl line — at least for a day — looked and produced like a solid second unit.

Now, to find some chemistry in a bottom six that added two new players on this trip in Carrick and Adam Henrique. They combined to go 14-3 in the faceoff circle on Saturday but had just one shot on goal apiece and zero points.

“It takes a little while for guys to come to a new team, figure out the system, figure out the guys,” assured Perry. “Once they get comfortable and start to really get to know everybody, how everybody plays, it’s going to be that much better.

“We’re deep, and that’s good.”