The Maple Leafs weren’t out of their depth on Saturday night.
In their first game after the 4 Nations Face-Off break, the Leafs took advantage of a disorganized Carolina Hurricanes team and beat the visitors 6-3 at Scotiabank Arena.
The Hurricanes scored all three of their goals in the final eight minutes of the third, but a big early Leafs lead managed to hold.
Leafs captain Auston Matthews ensured a Toronto victory when he scored into an empty Carolina net with over a minute to play, and Pontus Holmberg, with his second of the game, followed with another empty-netter. It was Matthews’ first goal in seven games.
As 4 Nations champion Mitch Marner and fellow tournament participants William Nylander and Matthews settled back into a regular routine, it was the Leafs’ lower-tier players who stepped up.
In building a 3-0 lead before the game was seven minutes old, the Leafs benefitted from Alex Steeves’ first NHL goal and rare contributions from Holmberg and David Kampf.
Steeves got the nod after he was recalled earlier in the week from the Toronto Marlies and Max Pacioretty went down with an injury one day before practice. In true Steeves fashion — at least, what he has been doing in the American Hockey League — he beat ’Canes goalie Pyotr Kochetkov with a one-timer off a feed from John Tavares at 2:50. At 3:29, Holmberg got credit for his third goal of the season after Jordan Staal knocked the puck off Kochetkov and into the net.
Kampf finished a nifty tic-tac-toe sequence with Steven Lorentz and Steeves at 6:39. It was Kampf’s fourth goal.
For good measure, Nylander set up Tavares at 15:06 as the Leafs scored four goals in the first period for the first time in 2024-25.
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In his first home start since Dec. 12, the night he departed against the Anaheim Ducks with a knee issue, Anthony Stolarz was on a roll until the latter half of the third.
Shayne Gostisbehere, Andrei Svechnikov and Jaccob Slavin all scored to make the final minutes more tense than they needed to be.
The Leafs had some scoring punch in mind when they summoned Steeves from the minors. He leads the AHL with 29 goals.
“He has the capability of putting the puck in the net, for sure,” Leafs coach Craig Berube said in the morning. “And he’s an effort player. He works extremely hard. He’s competitive.”
The Leafs were scheduled to depart immediately after the game for Chicago, where they will meet the Blackhawks on Sunday to start a four-game trip. Toronto is 5-4-1 in the second game of back-to-back sets.