Auston Matthews’ overtime winner against the New Jersey Devils on December 10 was pretty nasty, but the goal itself wasn’t really why this marks as one of the top goals of the season. Rather, it’s the circumstances around the goal and the way the game had gone leading up to it.
The Leafs and Devils faced off for the second time of the 2024-25 season, with former Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe looking for his first win against his old team. In a lot of ways, the game as poetic in how things played out for Keefe’s team. Leafs fans had become accustomed to watching their teams outshoot their opponent by a wide margin, doing everything they could except for score, only for the opponent to score a fluke goal and take the win despite being vastly outplayed. On this night, the Leafs were on the other end of it after suffering that same fate during Keefe’s tenure countless times.
It was a hometown game for goaltender Anthony Stolarz, who hailed from New Jersey, and he showed up to play. The Devils outshot the Maple Leafs 16-1 in the first period, and although the margin grew slimmer and slimmer by the period, they outshot the Leafs each time with the Devils holding a 38-15 lead on the shot clock heading into overtime. The Devils were all over the ice, peppering Stolarz with shots from each possible angle, but they couldn’t solve him.
This carried into overtime, with the Devils controlling pace for the majority of the frame. They couldn’t get many shots off, but when they did, Stolarz stuffed them. After Jack Hughes fed Brett Pesce for a clean look that ricocheted all the way back to centre ice, Matthews won the race to the puck and stuffed it past Jacob Markstrom for the 2-1 overtime win.
It was a textbook opposite day kind of game for the Maple Leafs, who have lost enough games in which they’ve outshot the opponent and ran into a hot goalie to last a lifetime. There were a number of moments last season that saw the Leafs on the other end of games in which the circumstances are typically reversed, and this was one of the most memorable.
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