GAME RECAP: Maple Leafs 7, Oilers 4

TORONTO, ON - Turn a new leaf and shake this one off.
The Edmonton Oilers saw a two-goal lead slip away in a four-goal second period from Toronto Maple Leafs while running into penalty trouble in a 7-4 defeat at Scotiabank Arena in the final game of their four-game road trip on Saturday night.
Defenceman Mattias Ekholm scored his first goal in Blue & Orange before a wrap-around tally from Evander Kane and Connor McDavid's 55th of the season had the Oilers ahead 3-1 two-and-a-half minutes into the second period.
Past the midway mark of the middle frame, the Maple Leafs answered back with four goals in 5:59 of the period to take a 5-3 lead into the final 20 minutes. Leon Draisaitl's power-play goal with 7:29 to play in regulation erased Auston Matthews's 30th goal of the season to give the Oilers life late before Noel Acciari's second of the game into an empty net sealed the defeat for the Oilers, who fall to 36-23-8 on the campaign.
"I thought we got away from playing simple," Head Coach Jay Woodcroft said. "We tried to pass through people, and they're a good team. They have good sticks, and I just saw a lot of self-inflicted wounds during that little time frame."
The Oilers head home and resume their schedule at Rogers Place on Tuesday when they host the Ottawa Senators.
"Obviously we want that second period back if we could redo it, but I still think the way that we played Boston and Buffalo, we can take confidence from that for sure," Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. "Obviously you want to win every night, and losses, they always sting. So we need to get back on the horse here and have a couple of games at home, but I think we can still take a lot of positives from this road trip."

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A FIRST FOR EKHOLM

An early Maple Leafs lead off Acciari's second effort 3:05 into the game didn't last long -- 22 seconds to be exact -- before Ekholm brought the house down with a blast from the blue line.
After a lane opened for the Swede at the top of the Toronto zone, Ekholm dropped a hammer of a slap shot from the top of the left circle that beat netminder Matt Murray clean over the right shoulder for his sixth of the season and first in an Oilers uniform to tie things up 1-1 before the four-minute mark had passed.
The 32-year-old defender has been a revelation on Edmonton's back end since his acquisition from the Nashville Predators at the Trade Deadline, playing big minutes alongside Evan Bouchard, who added an assist on the play along with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to make it a three-game point streak for the Oakville, Ont. product (1G, 4A).

KANDY WRAPPER

Keep this under wraps, but Evander Kane is good at hockey.
The 31-year-old hit double-digit goals with his 10th in his 26 games this campaign when Connor McDavid sauced him a pass on the rush that he elected to take all the way around the net and slip inside the far post past a sliding Murray and defenceman Mark Giordano, who both couldn't prevent Kane from lifting the Oilers to a 2-1 lead with eight-and-a-half minutes on the clock in the opening period.

FIFTY-FIVE HOLE FOR McDAVID

Maple Leafs captain John Tavares chose to defend the pass over the shot on McDavid, and that proved to be a mistake.
With Nick Bjugstad covered as Edmonton entered the Toronto zone, McDavid cut across the top of the circles into open ice where he fired his patented five-hole shot through the legs of Murray to make it 55 goals on the season for the captain, giving the Oilers a 3-1 lead that marked a high point in the period before things unravelled before the second intermission.

TORONTO TAKES OFF

The Maple Leafs forging their way back into the hockey game over the final 10 minutes of the second period happened fast, and without restrain.
Three goals in three minutes from the hosts turned a two-goal deficit into a one-goal advantage before Tavares' 30th of the campaign and second of the period put the cap on a four-goal, 5:59 stretch and a less-than-desirable middle frame for Edmonton.
"I would even say it's probably the last eight minutes of that period," Woodcroft said. "That wasn't our finest hour. Certainly, situations within our control."
Ryan McLeod tried to thread a pass through a dangerous area to Darnell Nurse before the seven-minute mark, but Mitch Marner was there to knock the puck down and execute a terrifc fake-out on Stuart Skinner to get a goal back for Toronto and start a tough stretch for the Oilers.

"It was a young mistake," Woodcroft said. "He'd be the first guy to own up for that and feel bad for it in the end. Hockey is a game of mistakes, and our goal as a team is to make fewer than the other team and capitalize when they make theirs. Tonight, they did a good job capitalizing on our self-inflicted wounds. That was one of them."
William Nylander beat Skinner five-hole 1:53 later, erasing Edmonton's lead before a picked-off puck in the neutral zone by the Maple Leafs led Tavares and Auston Matthews in on a 2-on-1 that the Leafs captain finished off in front. Before the frame was done, Tavares threw a no-look backhand on the power play past the Oilers netminder for a 5-3 Leafs lead heading into the final 40 minutes.
"I think it's not one or two guys. It's everybody in here," Nugent-Hopkins said. "We need to better in the middle of that second period, and we weren't and they took advantage. A little disappointing."

PENALTY PARADE

The Oilers didn't help their case when it came to keeping themselves out of the penalty box.
The night featured four coincidental penalties that padded the penalty-minute column for Edmonton and kept some big contributors like McDavid and Kane off the ice for extended periods of the hockey game.
"It was a tough game to find some rhythm," Woodcroft said. "There was a lot of four-on-four and coincidental penalties. The most I've seen. In the end, that's beyond our control. What is within our control is our level of execution when we do get on the ice."
When things were still salvagable for the Oilers, minor penalties to Darnell Nurse and Warren Foegele on opposite ends of the second intermission proved costly as Tavares and Matthews were able to find the back of the net to stretch Toronto's lead. Kane and Maple Leafs forward Michael Bunting, who was called for embellishment in the second period, got into it in the third period in front of Skinner's net, leading to four-minute coincidentals for roughing.

"I think it's funny the way you want to get these little ticky-tack calls, and he likes to dive and embellish and you want to get that out of the game, but they prevent guys from the consequences of those actions," Kane said. "A lot of the time, they get in the way sometimes pf the refs and I think fighting is a great deterrent of those type of players and actions. It just prevents guys from having to answer the bell. [Bunting's] a perfect example of that."
The penalty kill did their best to limit the dangerous Maple Leafs to two goals on five opportunities, but the discipline wasn't there for the Oilers over the full 60 minutes.
"The fact that they were up in the power plays and stuff like that, I couldn't say that there was any penalty I disputed. Maybe there were a couple that weren't the other way, but I can't dispute it. We've got to do a better job on killing penalties too, so they won the special team battle. But all those things are beyond anybody's control. What we do control is our execution level, and it wasn't at a high enough level tonight."

PARTING WORDS

Coach Woodcroft on the ways Edmonton could change momentum:
"There's different ways to create momentum. Sometimes it's a forecheck shift, sometimes it's a big finished check. Sometimes it's a blocked shot. Sometimes it's just guaranteeing your own blue line and taking a hit to make that play. There's different ways to create momentum other than waiting for a power play to get you going or anything like that, and that's something in that second period we didn't do a good enough job with."
Coach Woodcroft on wrapping up this four-game trip with a loss:
"This is the third time I think in five weeks or so that we've come to the East Coast and gone back. We've played some good games, and then we've played some forgettable ones. To me, I thought this one was a game that we could have done better with, but we made too many mistakes. When you make mistakes against teams that can hurt, you're made to pay, and tonight we were made to pay and they found a way to get the two points. We're looking forward to going home."
Kane on self-inflicted wounds and giving up seven goals after taking two against in Boston:
"We all saw it happen -- self-inflicted wounds, turnovers that we can't make against good players and good teams, and it was a tough four-minute stretch there.
"Obviously you want to find a consistency of winning hockey and not giving up six goals when you went into Boston and only gave up two, so like I said, we had self-inflicted mistakes that cost us the game and we just got to learn from those mistakes and better."