Ottawa Senators winger Ryan Dzingel watches a shot get deflected past Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Frederik Andersen during action at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto on Wednesday night.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Bad luck and one too many defensive mistakes sent the Toronto Maple Leafs into their five-day break on a sour note.
On the other side of the coin, the Ottawa Senators, who also began their NHL-mandated annual break after Wednesday's game, went into it on a high note by beating the Leafs 4-3, one night after getting humiliated by the Chicago Blackhawks.
After the Leafs – who were the better team most of the night and outshot the Sens 47-32 – fought hard to tie the score in the third period, two more mistakes cost them their second consecutive loss in two games they should have won. On Monday, they blew a 2-0 lead to the Columbus Blue Jackets in the final minutes of the third period and lost in overtime.
The first mistake in the crucial play against Ottawa came late in the third period when Leafs defenceman Morgan Rielly, who up to then was playing a monster game, made an ill-advised pinch in the Ottawa zone. He lost the puck to create a three-on-one rush. Then his defence partner Ron Hainsey gambled by going after puck-carrier Matt Duchene and a quick pass sent Tom Pyatt in alone on Leafs goaltender Frederik Andersen. Pyatt scored the winning goal with about three minutes left in the period.
Following a bad loss with a game the next night may have been tiring for the Senators but goaltender Craig Anderson, by far the best player on the ice after getting pulled early in Tuesday's 8-2 loss to the Blackhawks, said it was the right recipe to put the Chicago game behind them.
"We got the result," he said. "It makes you feel good about your team. It's one of those things where there's a lot of ups and downs. You try to stay fresh as best you can when you come to work.
"You put it behind you as quickly as you can by playing right away. You don't have time to think about it. It was a complete 180. Guys were battling hard, we did everything we possibly could, we were making the right reads, making the right plays. We were definitely stronger in front of our net tonight."
The Maple Leafs deserved better as they dominated the Senators, holding a whopping 63-35 edge in shot attempts in the first two periods, but trailed the visitors 2-1. In fact, until rookie defenceman Andreas Borgman bounced a shot off an Ottawa forward and into the top corner as the second period wound down there was serious doubt the Leafs would ever get a puck behind Craig Anderson.
He may have carried an .897 save percentage into the game and was pulled after coughing up four goals on 26 shots in Ottawa's shellacking at the hands of the Blackhawks, but none of that carried over against the Leafs.
"Andy played great for us tonight," Senators captain Erik Karlsson said of Anderson. "We found a way to stick with it. They came but we didn't change. We kept it up through 60 minutes."
But once they got to Anderson with Borgman's goal from the point at 18:10 in the second, the Leafs wasted little time doing it again. James van Riemsdyk tied the score 54 seconds into the third.
But the combination of bad luck and a defensive mistake – the same thing that allowed the Senators to take a 2-0 lead – struck again. A bad bounce off the glass behind the Leafs net handed Sens forward Gabriel Dumont an easy goal for a 3-2 lead.
The Leafs, though, stuck at it and were rewarded on another shot from the point through a crowd. This one was taken by Morgan Rielly, who scored his fifth goal of the season at 12:28 to tie the score 3-3. But the happiness did not last long, as Rielly made the final mistake to start the sequence that led to the winning goal.
"In the end, you've got to play right," Leafs head coach Mike Babcock said. "If you make mistakes, it costs goals.
"You've got to give [the Senators] credit. They were a team on back-to-back nights. They found a way to win and that's what you do on the road. As for us, you've got to be patient and play right. In my opinion, two nights in a row, we were in position to win a game. Big players for us made mistakes."
The Leafs came out skating hard at the opening faceoff and kept the puck in the Senators zone in the opening minutes. There were several scoring chances, a couple of awful Ottawa giveaways including one by Karlsson, and the Leafs looked to be on their way.
Leading the charge was Auston Matthews. In the first three minutes he missed an open net, hit the post and then was robbed by Craig Anderson on a third scoring chance. Unfortunately for the Leafs, that set the tone.
Then, on their rare forays into the Toronto zone, the hockey gods, as Babcock likes to call the forces of fate, smiled on the Senators.
Midway through the first period, Sens defenceman Thomas Chabot threw a centring pass to the front of the Leafs net where it hit Leafs defenceman Roman Polak's skate and bounced into the net.
Next came a defensive miscue when the Leafs defence pair of Jake Gardiner and Connor Carrick were caught out of position early in the second period. When van Riemsdyk, the lone Leaf at the front of the net, was unable to tie up Mike Hoffman, the Sens winger scored his 11th goal of the season.
By the midway point of the second period, Carrick paid the price for that play and a few others as Babcock nailed him to the bench for the rest of the period. This could mean a lot more ice time after the break for newly promoted rookie Travis Dermott, who was assigned to the press box for the Ottawa game.