Leafs improving on power play entering clash vs. Red Wings

The Toronto Maple Leafs hope they have a chance to show off their revived power play on Friday night when they host the Detroit Red Wings.Toronto had three goals while on the man advantage Tuesday night in a 4-0 home win over the Boston Bruins. The Maple Leafs entered the game 4-for-40 with the man advantage for the season and now are 7-for-47 (14.9 percent). They also killed off six Boston power plays.”It comes down to special teams, and obviously we did pretty well in that department, so that had a big impact on the game,” said Morgan Rielly, who had a goal and two assists on Tuesday.”I don’t think we are going to get carried away thinking we got anything solved. I think it was just a matter of time; it was just about sticking with the process and we wanted to shoot more pucks, get more traffic and I thought we did those things, but by no means did we have everything all sorted out now moving forward.”Anthony Stolarz also provided strong goaltending, stopping 29 shots to earn his first shutout of the season and the ninth of his career.Toronto had lost two in a row, both on the road, before Tuesday. Scoring consistently has been a problem, but all facets of the game were working against the Bruins.”Probably our most complete game of the year,” Stolarz said. “Boston is a very good team. We knew they were physical and they were going to try to grind us down and I think we matched their intensity, matched their physicality really well.”Maple Leafs star forward Auston Matthews (upper-body injury) did not practice Thursday after missing his first game this season on Tuesday.Toronto coach Craig Berube said on Thursday that Matthews, who led the National Hockey League with 69 goals last season, is day-to-day and could not say if he would play on Friday.”That’s to be determined, still. It’s hard for me to answer that,” Berube said.The Maple Leafs are 36-19-2 all-time with Matthews out of the lineup.

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