With team captain Auston Matthews back from injury, the Toronto Maple Leafs will look to extend their winning streak to four games on Sunday night as they host the Philadelphia Flyers.
Matthews returned to action on Saturday night after missing six games due to an upper-body injury. He scored an empty-net goal and added two assists in a 6-4 home win against the Boston Bruins.
“I felt good,” said Matthews, a five-time All-Star and three-time NHL goal-scoring leader, including last season (69 goals). “I thought my linemates made it pretty easy for me tonight, too. The chemistry was there.”
His linemates were Matthew Knies, who scored his first career hat trick and had two assists, and Mitchell Marner, who netted an empty-net goal and recorded four assists.
“It felt incredible,” Knies said. “Felt the luck back on my side and that was a good game, a good overall effort from all of us in here.”
The Maple Leafs and Flyers will meet for the first time this season, with a rematch scheduled for Tuesday in Philadelphia.
The Flyers will complete a six-game road trip with a chance to split the series. They lost three of the first five games, including a 5-2 defeat to the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday.
Toronto was 3-3-0 during Matthews’ recent absence.
“(Matthews) is our captain, he’s a great player, we all know that,” said Toronto coach Craig Berube. “Having him in the lineup gives you a lot more options, obviously, and he just drives the pace of play. He’s an extremely hard worker, plays 200 feet. The pace goes up for everybody.”
Matthews missed nine games in November due to injury, and Toronto went 7-2-0 without him.
“It’s not always going to be pretty, but just to be able to find a way to win whether it’s through good goaltending, good special teams, it’s not going to be perfect every night,” Matthews said. “Good teams find a way to win, and obviously you like to be able to win in different ways. We’ve shown we can do that.”
Flyers coach John Tortorella said his team deserved more than a 1-2-0 record over their last three games.
“I thought we could have had points in all of them,” Tortorella said after practice on Saturday. “We didn’t, we just keep playing. We keep on working on our game, what we’re doing, corrections when we need to make corrections.
Just the last game, I thought we played well. I watched the tape yesterday against Vegas, I thought we could’ve come away with points there.”
Philadelphia’s power play has been effective, scoring in the past two games, both times by Travis Konecny.
“It’s clicking right now,” said Owen Tippett, who assisted on both power-play goals. “I think we’ve done a good job with the group we have out there and communicating. I think we’ve done a good job at kind of filling holes. I know we have our positions, but if guys see a gap open, they go to that gap and it makes it easier for the guy (with the) puck to have those options.”
Morgan Frost, Joel Farabee, and Jamie Drysdale complete the new power-play setup.
“Hopefully, it keeps on growing because there is a little bit of chemistry there,” Tortorella said. “I think Jamie’s done a better job, too, up top. That’s been a weakness of ours during the years, finding someone that can run it up top. I think Jamie’s feeling more comfortable there.”
