Marner, Rielly propel Maple Leafs in win against Wild
via NHL.com
Mitchell Marner and Morgan Rielly combined for seven points in the second period for the Toronto Maple Leafs in a 4-2 win against the Minnesota Wild at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday.
Marner had a goal and two assists and Rielly had four assists for Toronto (4-2-1), and Frederik Andersen made 27 saves. The Maple Leafs went 2-for-3 on the power play after scoring twice in 12 opportunities over the previous four games.
“We wanted to get our power play going tonight; that was huge for our team,” Marner said. “We stayed patient with our game plan, and that’s something we have to keep going forward with.”
Rielly tied the Maple Leafs record for the most assists in a regular-season period (Rick Vaive on March 12, 1984).
“Good for him; he’s a good player and was much better defensively,” Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock said of Rielly. “He’s always been good offensively. It’s important he has good nights and feels good about himself. Any time your good players score and generate offense and that’s what they like to do and they get feeling good, your team is better.”
Luke Kunin and Gerald Mayhew scored, and Devan Dubnyk made 30 saves for Minnesota, which has lost five of its first six games (1-5-0).
“We need to be a 20-man team,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said. “It’s not the veterans, it’s not the rookies … everybody’s got to chip in, or bad things are going to happen.
“We don’t have a team that can rely on one guy. We don’t have Auston Matthews that’s going to score 50-60 goals. Everybody on different nights has got to contribute.”
They said it
“I wish I had a magic potion to make everybody faster, but I don’t. That’s why you have to grind it out and play maybe a boring hockey game. You can’t get in an end-to-end game with some of these speedy teams. We played great in the first period and in the start of the second, but it gets frustrating when you get scored on three or four times in a short span.” — Wild coach Bruce Boudreau
“I think we just talked about being patient [in the first intermission] and not trying to force too much. I thought we played a good first [and] obviously didn’t get the results we wanted, but I thought we came out and just kind of stayed the course. We took advantage of some power-play opportunities and other than that, we played simple and went to work. It’s good when we can stay patient like that.” — Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly
Need to know
Mayhew played his first NHL game after playing 164 games with Iowa of the American Hockey League over four seasons. … Tavares has a three-game point streak (two goals, one assist), and Johnsson has four points (two goals, two assists) in his past four games.
What’s next
Wild: At the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday (7 p.m. ET; TSN2, RDS, FS-N, NHL.TV)
Maple Leafs: At the Washington Capitals on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; SN1, TVAS, NBCSWA, NHL.TV)