Must see: Matthews and Kapanen connect on back to back goals to tie things up.

Leafs close the gap thanks to this pair.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 5 years ago
 Must see: Matthews and Kapanen connect on back to back goals to tie things up.
Kostas Lymperopoulos/CSM/Zuma

The Toronto Maple Leafs have kicked off the season with somewhat of a rocky start, especially when you consider that their opponents early on were teams that they were expected to beat rather convincingly. 

The tough start for the Maple Leafs has already resulted in some unpleasant circumstances for some players on the Toronto Maple Leafs roster, Igor Ozhiganov was benched earlier today after he was embarrassed by Ottawa Senators defenseman Thomas Chabot on a key goal against the Maple Leafs. Clearly the move was designed by head coach Mike Babcock to send a message to the rest of the locker room, but early on on Sunday night it did not appear as if the Maple Leafs had received or been reception to the message from their coach. 

The Maple Leafs were facing off against the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday night and it looked early on like the Leafs were in some significant trouble. The Blackhawks jumped out to an early lead thanks to a pair of goals from Blackhawks forward Alex DeBrincat and Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews, who has been on an absolute tear as of late, and it looked like the Leafs were well on their way to another disappointing loss against yet another team that was predicted to have a rather poor season this year.

Thankfully for the Leafs they were saved from heading into the games first intermission, and perhaps and absolute grilling at the hands of head coach Mike Babcock, due to some heroics from both Leafs' superstar Auston Matthews as well as forward Kasperi Kapanen. The two Leafs forwards connected on a pair of goals in the first period to erase the gap before the first intermission, something that likely allowed their teammates to breath a lot easier headed back into the locker room.

The first goal came courtesy of a perfectly placed lob from Matthews who was deep in the Maple Leafs zone at the time, a lob that landed right on Kapanen's stick and allowed him to quickly accelerate ahead of the Blackhawks defense. Kapanen made the best of his opportunity and after some quick and basic moves he went upstairs on the glove side to beat Chicago Blackhawks netminder Cam Ward for Toronto's first goal of the game. That cut the lead down to just a single goal and it was only a few seconds later that Kapanen was able to return the favor with an assist of his own. 

The Leafs had control of the puck in the Blackhawks zone when Babcock called for a change and put Matthews back out on the ice with Kapanen. Just a few seconds later Kapanen spotted Matthews streaking towards the Blackhawks net and Kapanen fed him a pass that eventually led to the Maple Leafs' second goal of the game. To be fair to Kapanen here the initial pass didn't work out largely due to the fact that Matthews was unable to correctly track the puck and whiffed on his first short attempt. Matthews was able to recover however and kicked the puck back onto his stick before tying the game at 2 goals a piece.

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