Nylander sets Maple Leafs’ season-opening point streak record in loss to Kings

William Nylander had an assist to extend his season-opening point streak to a team-record nine games for the Toronto Maple Leafs in a 4-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday.

Nylander was credited with a secondary assist on John Tavares’ power-play goal for the Maple Leafs (5-3-1). Joseph Woll made 23 saves.

“We seemed a little flat and they were quick,” Tavares said. “They used their speed and we have to do a better job of recognizing we were a little flat and our game maybe isn’t where we wanted it to be and how we get that going and grab momentum back. Obviously it took us a little bit too long to get that going.”

Kevin Fiala had an assist to extend his point streak to eight games, Andreas Englund scored his first NHL goal and Cam Talbot made 29 saves for the Kings (5-2-2), who are 4-0-0 on the road and 3-0-1 in their past four games.

“Tonight was a real solid night,” Los Angeles coach Todd McLellan said. “I thought our penalty kill early in the first set the tone, who knows how it would have went from there but they did a real good job. Scoring first and then keeping our foot on the gas pedal was important. It was a full team effort. I’m proud of them.”

Soon after the Kings killed off a minor penalty to Fiala for slashing at 4:26, they went up 1-0 at 6:38 of the first period when Englund’s backhand shot deflected off Mark Giordano’s stick. It was his first goal in his 89th NHL game.

“It felt great. It’s been a long time since I played my first NHL game, so it’s great to finally get the first goal,” Englund said. “After a while you start thinking, ‘Am I ever going to score one?’”

Talbot said seeing Englund get his first NHL goal early in the game served as a boost for the whole team.

“[We were] pretty excited for him,” Talbot said. “You could see Kevin (Fiala) went and grabbed the puck right away for him. I told him on the bench, ‘Congrats buddy, it doesn’t always need to be a rocket because you can shoot the puck but sometimes you just have to put the puck on the net,’ like he did so good for him.”

Phillip Danault made it 2-0 at 11:40 when he tapped in a cross-crease pass from Trevor Moore.

Arthur Kaliyev put the Kings up 3-0 at 9:46 of the second period, shooting high to the blocker side from the top of the right face-off circle on the power play when Fiala’s pass came to him after deflecting off Noah Gregor’s stick.

Tavares cut it to 3-1 at 8:25 of the third period when he shot from the left face-off dot on the power play. It was the first power-play goal allowed by the Kings on the road this season in 14 attempts.

“We were flat from the start,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said. “We had a couple surges through the game at different times but nothing that we sustained. When you’re climbing out of a hole and it’s a very good, structured team, it’s tough sledding.”

Adrian Kempe made it 4-1 at 12:13 when he tapped in a pass at the side of the net from Anze Kopitar that went behind Woll across the goal crease.

“It’s definitely up there (with our best games this season),” Talbot said. “We started on time, this is a tough building to play in, they come out really hard and they have a ton of talent over there. This was as complete a 60 minutes as we’ve played all year.”

It was Toronto’s first game back at home after going 3-1-1 on a five-game road trip.

“Whatever the circumstances are, every team goes through times during the year where you have a difficult schedule, you’re coming off a long road trip and I think with the team we have, we have to recognize and understand how you have to fight through that and find ways to execute and do what we need to do to grab momentum, play to our game and dictate the terms,” Tavares said. “Especially the team we are striving to be, situations like these we have to be better.”