Maple Leafs make lucky bounce count in win against Avalanche

TORONTO — Joseph Woll couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Neither could the Colorado Avalanche.

And when all was said and done, one of the weirdest plays of the season — which involved referee Kelly Sutherland falling on his rump — resulted in the winning goal by Steven Lorentz for the Toronto Maple Leafs in a 2-1 victory against the Avalanche at Scotiabank Arena Wednesday, snapping Colorado’s nine-game point streak.

It truly was a scene right out of the theater of the bizarre, as Avalanche coach Jared Bednar noted afterwards.

“That one was a little strange,” he said. “And it couldn’t have come at a worst time.”

For Colorado, that is.

For Woll and the Maple Leafs, on the other hand, the timing couldn’t have been better.

It was early in the third period, and the momentum seemed to be leaning Colorado’s way. Toronto had just taken a costly too many men on the ice penalty just 1:31 into the period, a potentially ominous recipe for disaster in a 1-1 game given the potent Avalanche power play led by stars Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.

To that point, Woll had been the star of the show. Colorado had registered the final nine shots of the second period for a 28-15 shot advantage going into the third period and easily could have been ahead if not for the Toronto goaltender.

When a puck came loose behind the Toronto net, Maple Leafs defenseman Simon Benoit, one of Toronto's more reliable penalty killers, quickly got to it and rifled it down the ice to chew some precious seconds off the clock.

Or so he thought.

Positioned in the neutral zone near the center ice redline, Sutherland saw the puck coming and tried to get out of the way, only to lose his balance and plop to the ice.

Instead of the puck going all the way deep into Colorado territory, it hit Sutherland, who quickly got up and took himself out of the play.

“I’m not sure what happened with the ref,” Lorentz said. “I was trying to get a change but then I saw him go down a little bit and saw the puck squirt loose. So I thought I might as well reroute …”

The Maple Leafs forward did exactly that, grabbing the puck and heading down the left wing toward the Colorado net.

From his vantage point in the Toronto crease, Woll cracked a smile as the play unfolded.

“I mean, I’ll take it for sure,” he said with a chuckle. “Bounces happen. It was unfortunate for them. But it was nice to be on the right side of it.”

Especially when Lorentz took full advantage of that break by finishing the play with a seeing-eye snap shot into the top corner past Colorado goalie Mackenzie Blackwood, a shorthanded goal at 2:53 of the third that proved to be the difference.

“Oh man, you can’t possibly make this up,” said former NHL goalie Brian Boucher on TNT’s broadcast of the game.

As the capacity crowd went bonkers, Lorentz went down to one knee and busted out into a series of fist pumps. Having been a Maple Leafs fan while growing up 60 miles southwest of Toronto in Kitchener, he’d dreamt of one day having signature moments like this in blue-and-white.

He just never envisioned it would come on such a wacky play.

The 28-year-old forward was a member of the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers last season before signing a one-year, $775,000 contract with Toronto on Oct. 7. Even after bringing the Cup home to Kitchener in the summer, he said he still has a hard time believing he’s now playing for his beloved Maple Leafs.

“It’s surreal every game,” he said. “I take pride pulling on that jersey every single game. And I mean that.

“I talk to myself (about that). You know, scoring a goal like that tonight, you think of just being a little kid jumping into the glass. It’s definitely cool.”

So, too, for Lorentz and his teammates, is the fact that the victory pulled them into a first-place tie in the Atlantic Division with the Panthers, his former team, with 85 points, two more than the Tampa Bay Lightning, who hold a game in hand.

Of course, Toronto would not have won in the first place if not for the 38-save performance by Woll, a number of those stops of the spectacular variety. The 26-year-old now has back-to-back victories and is elevating his game in his battle with Anthony Stolarz to see who will be the starter in the Eastern Conference First Round when the Stanley Cup Playoffs start next month.

“I thought it was a great team win for us,” he said. “I thought we did a great job of locking it down after we scored that go-ahead goal.

“That’s a really good team over there. Just a big win.”

Thanks, in part, to a play you don’t see every day.

And, in the case of the Avalanche, never want to again.