Maple Leafs netminder Ilya Samsonov saw a lot of Golden Knights and a few pucks on Tuesday night at Scotiabank Arena.
First game home after a long road trip, a scenario typically susceptible to a stumble. Facing the same opponent — reigning Stanley Cup champions, no less — you humiliated just a few days ago. The Vegas Golden Knights were huffing steam out of their nostrils.
Situation ripe for the stars to misalign. For the Maple Leafs to sink below the horizon of a seven-game win streak screeching to a halt. Most of these guys have never even been in that time zone before.
For nearly 30 minutes on Tuesday evening at Scotiabank Arena, Ilya Samsonov — the sublimely resurrected Samsonov, on a personal hurtle of six consecutive wins (didn’t start last Thursday’s dismantling of the Knights off the Strip) — looked like he might single-handedly dictate this encounter. And in a way he did, in the 6-2 defeat.
Couple of shaky goals surrendered in the middle frame, shades of the Bad Sammy from October through December 2023. One was indisputably lousy, through the pads — though, of considerable significance, the result of a foolish decision by John Tavares to play the puck off the boards rather than safely around the net, intercepted, centred to William Karlsson — which made it 3-1 with 48.8 seconds left in the determinative second; the other more excusable from a goalie’s perspective, a point shot redirected by a deft waist-level-raised stick by Mason Morelli.
Ivan Barbashev had opened the scoring at 9:11 after a scoreless first period, where territorial advantage had swung from Toronto to Vegas.
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