TORONTO — It’s games like these that tell you who you are.
Not the ones where it all lines up, where you overwhelm teams with machine-like dominance, every gear turning with flawless precision. It’s nights like this: still aching from yesterday’s tilt, the best of your best out of the lineup, lines thrown in a blender at the last minute. It’s a tough opponent staring down at you from across the ice, running through you every chance they get, fighting for their playoff lives when yours is already signed, sealed and delivered.
In those moments, what have you got?
On a Sunday night at Scotiabank Arena, the Toronto Maple Leafs proved unfazed by the challenge, taking down the rough-and-tumble New York Islanders 4-2 without reigning Rocket Richard Trophy winner Auston Matthews. And in doing so, bagging a franchise-record 50th win and 106th point.
They didn’t make it easy on themselves. With the tone set from the opening draw courtesy of a bone-clattering check from New York’s Ross Johnston on veteran Mark Giordano, the Maple Leafs started their trek through the mud. They stumbled early, the Islanders gifted an all-too-easy power-play marker late in the first as Ilya Lyubushkin executed what his coach later called a “textbook screen” on his own netminder, allowing Anthony Beauvillier to walk in and casually snipe the game’s first past Jack Campbell.
But the Maple Leafs battled back, returning to level ground just a few minutes later, Mitch Marner floating to the netfront unseen like a ghost in the slot, eventually landing in the perfect spot to whip a Giordano rebound top corner on Ilya Sorokin.
It was a similar story in the middle frame. This time it was Alex Kerfoot who took over the own-goal duties, a botched clearing attempt in front of Campbell accidentally ricocheting into the back of Toronto’s net. Again, they climbed back, Kerfoot taking it on his shoulders and undoing his error with a gorgeous stutter-step setup for Pierre Engvall on a two-on-one midway through the night.
A few minutes later, William Nylander — who was flying all game, his deft stick-lift, non-pass helping spring Kerfoot and Engvall’s tying tally — took a pass from John Tavares on the power play and fired one home to give his Maple Leafs the lead. They didn’t relinquish it from there.
It’s emblematic of how this season’s gone for this team. Stumble early, fight back, take off.
“There’s been very little complacency in our group. We got off to a tough start at the beginning of the year. Lots of things were being said outside of the room, inside the room, and coming from there to where we’re at right now [says] a lot,” Kerfoot said of that journey post-game.
But just like Sunday night, it could’ve just as easily slipped away from them, had they let it.
“I think it can do one of two things to a group,” Kerfoot continued, speaking of the chatter from the chorus of doubters early in the year. “It can either tear things apart or it can bring you together. I think that our play on the ice has really spoken for how we responded to it.”
The win over the Islanders offered the Maple Leafs faithful a chance step back and take stock, to see beyond the historic dominance that’s become a nightly routine for the squad’s usual focal point. It’s been the Auston Matthews Show in Toronto of late, and rightfully so given the rarified air the young sniper’s putting himself in. But with No. 34 sidelined, the 17,464 in attendance were granted an opportunity to better appreciate what’s been going on in Matthews’ orbit.
In netting his 34th goal of the year Sunday night, Marner collected his 94th point too, tying his career-high in 15 fewer games than the last time he reached the sum, and with eight more goals to his name this time around. The 24-year-old has been the class of the league since the calendar turned from 2021 to 2022 — no other NHLer has outscored him since Jan. 1, in which time Marner’s amassed an absurd 72 points in 42 games. He’s been scoring above a point-per-game pace since November, above 1.50 per game since January, over 1.65 for the past two months.
Nylander’s power-play marker all but guaranteed he’ll be setting a new personal best before the year’s through, too, the goal tying his personal high of 31 — news to Nylander, who laughed when told he’d tied that 31-spot: “I didn’t know that… I thought I had more goals.” — to go along with his already career-best 74 points. And then there’s Engvall’s continued transformation, and Kerfoot’s career-best 50th point, making the Maple Leafs the only club with seven players above the 50-point threshold.
Whether any of it matters in the end remains to be seen, but the team can take solace in the fact that they’re pushing more than they ever have to right their past post-season wrongs, even as key names move in and out of the lineup.
“You know, we’ve had a lot of guys miss a lot of games this year, including myself, and guys have stepped up and played a bigger role, and we’ve won a lot of big games,” Marner said after Sunday’s win. “It’s something that we always talk about — just stepping up and taking on more of the spotlight, and guys have thrived in it.”
Added Kerfoot: “There’s going to be injuries. Every team deals with them throughout the year, and we’ve played with a bunch of different guys out throughout the course of the year. And we’ve really moved forward.”
That’s the most crucial education these Maple Leafs can get this season. There’s no question they’re an elite team, if all lines up correctly, if everything falls in their favour. The questions have always been around what happens when the plans fall apart, when the plot twists arrive. It’s not about perfecting the way you’d prefer to win — it’s about learning how to win any game, any way.
On this night, they did. And in their coach’s eyes, they’ve been doing it for a fair while this season.
“You look at how we’ve played, look at the results that we’ve gotten and how we’ve gotten those results — in particular against some of the top teams, and teams that we’re going to face within our division, whether it’s at home or on the road — we’ve done a good job,” Keefe said, “and gotten good results.”
Without their best, they proved they still have elite talent, that they can still take on opponents who meet the game with an approach opposite to theirs, and come out with two points. They even proved they can still make some history without No. 34.
But all of it will only matter if it becomes a brick in the path to the place they truly want to get to. That much is clear from the tone struck by these Leafs in the wake of officially putting together the best regular season in Maple Leafs history.
“It’s a long season. It’s a grind to win a lot of games in this league. There’s lots of good teams. So it’s a really cool thing to be a part of. But we’ve got bigger and better things ahead,” Kerfoot said of the franchise record.
“It really means nothing if we don’t accomplish anything in the playoffs. But it is a grind in this regular season to win games, and we’ve been doing that on a pretty consistent basis.”
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
CALGARY – Mired in their first four-game losing skid in 20 years, the Calgary Stampeders are going back to Jake Maier at quarterback on Saturday after he was benched for a game.
It won’t be an easy assignment.
Visiting McMahon Stadium are the Eastern Conference-leading Montreal Alouettes (10-2) who own the CFL’s best record. The Stampeders (4-8) have fallen to last in the Western Conference.
“Six games is plenty of time, but also it is just six games,” said Maier. “We’ve got to be able to get on the right track.”
Calgary is in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2004.
“I do still believe in this team,” said Stampeders’ head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson. “I want to see improvement, though. I want to see guys on a weekly basis elevating their game, and we haven’t been doing that.”
Maier is one of the guys under the microscope. Two weeks ago, the second-year starter threw four interceptions in a 35-20 home loss to the Edmonton Elks.
After his replacement, rookie Logan Bonner, threw five picks in last week’s 37-16 loss to the Elks in Edmonton, the football is back in Maier’s hands.
“Any time you fail or something doesn’t go your way in life, does it stink in the moment? Yeah. But then the days go on and you learn things about yourself and you learn how to prepare a little bit better,” said Maier. “It makes you mentally tougher.”
Dickenson wants to see his quarterback making better decisions with the football.
“Things are going to happen, interceptions will happen, but try to take calculated risks, rather than just putting the ball up there and hoping that we catch it,” said Dickenson.
A former quarterback himself, he knows the importance of that vital position.
“You cannot win without good quarterback play,” Dickenson said. “You’ve got to be able to make some plays — off-schedule plays, move-around plays, plays that break down, plays that aren’t designed perfectly, but somehow you found the right guy, and then those big throws where you’re taking that hit.”
But it’s going to take a team effort, and that includes the club’s receiving corp.
“We always have to band together because we need everything to go right for our receivers to get the ball,” said Nik Lewis, the Stampeders’ receivers coach. “The running back has to pick up the blitz, the o-line has to block, the quarterback has to make the right reads, and then give us a catchable ball.”
Lewis brings a unique perspective to this season’s frustrations as he was a 22-year-old rookie in Calgary in 2004 when the Stamps went 4-14 under coach Matt Dunigan. They turned it around the next season and haven’t missed the playoffs since.”
“Thinking back and just looking at it, there’s just got to be an ultimate belief that you can get it done. Look at Montreal, they were 6-7 last year and they’ve gone 18-2 since then,” said Lewis.
Montreal is also looking to rebound from a 37-23 loss to the B.C. Lions last week. But for head coach Jason Maas, he says his team’s mindset doesn’t change, regardless of what happened the previous week.
“Last year when we went through a four-game losing streak, you couldn’t tell if we were on a four-game winning streak or a four-game losing streak by the way the guys were in the building, the way we prepared, the type of work ethic we have,” said Maas. “All our standards are set, so that’s all we focus on.”
While they may have already clinched a playoff spot, Alouettes’ quarterback Cody Fajardo says this closing stretch remains critical because they want to finish the season strong, just like last year when they won their final five regular-season games before ultimately winning the Grey Cup.
“It doesn’t matter about what you do at the beginning of the year,” said Fajardo. “All that matters is how you end the year and how well you’re playing going into the playoffs so that’s what these games are about.”
The Alouettes’ are kicking off a three-game road stretch, one Fajardo looks forward to.
“You understand what kind of team you have when you play on the road because it’s us versus the world mentality and you can feel everybody against you,” said Fajardo. “Plus, I always tend to find more joy in silencing thousands of people than bringing thousands of people to their feet.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
