The Monday Dose looks at the wild Centennial Classic featuring the stylings of Auston Matthews
The NHL celebrated the start of its 100th year of existence with the Centennial Classic in Toronto and while the league celebrated its past, it also got a glimpse of its future.
The Toronto Maple Leafs were shown to most of the United States for the first time and it was their rookie sensation, Auston Matthews who stole the show.
The first overall pick scored twice including his 20th of the season and is tied for second in goals with Jeff Carter, behind only Sidney Crosby who has 26.
The outdoor game was delayed 30 minutes because of the glare of the sun but outside of that, it was a perfect day for hockey.
The NHL also unveiled the first 33 players of their top 100 of the first 100 years.
All the players started their careers before the first half-century of the NHL and it sure was nice to see some of the players that were still alive including greats like Johnny Bower, Dave Keon, Glenn Hall and Red Kelly.
The remainder of the top 100 will be named at the NHL All-Star Game in Los Angeles.
The Winter Classic goes on Tuesday with Chicago visiting St. Louis to play at Busch Stadium.
It should be a good one.
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TORONTO 5 DETROIT 4 (Overtime)
As mentioned earlier, It was Auston Matthews Day as he scored a pair including the overtime winner as the Maple Leafs dug the Detroit grave just a bit deeper, winning 5-4 in overtime.
It was not a very good game for the first two periods as Detroit led 1-0 on a bullet of a shot from Anthony Mantha who potted his eighth of the season in the second.
The shots on net in the first two periods were 18-17 Detroit but there were a total of only nine scoring chances which made for some boring hockey.
But the third and the overtime certainly made up for that!
The Maple Leafs scored four straight goals to take a commanding 4-1 lead as Leo Komarov started things off early on with his sixth. He took a Jake Gardiner pass and muscled it in from in front of the net to tie the game at 1.
Then rookie Mitch Marner scored a beauty of a goal as he made a couple of nice moves and sniped a shot into the top corner from the slot to give the Maple Leafs their first lead of the game.
A couple of more goals from rookies Connor Brown and Matthews first of the night gave Toronto a seemingly commanding 4-1 lead with less than eight minutes to go.
But then cue the Detroit comeback.
First Jonathan Ericsson scored his first of the season and first goal in 49 games and then the Red Wings pulled their goalie Jared Coreau with 2:21 to go.
With six attackers, Dylan Larkin brought the Red Wings to within one at 18:14 and the Red Wings once again pulled the goalie with a minute to go.
Mantha scored his second of the game and ninth of the season with 1.1 seconds to go in the third as he found the back of the net in a wild scramble in front of Leafs goalie Frederik Andersen. After some discussion, the goal counted and it sent the game into overtime where Matthews continued his heroics with the winner.
Matthews has taken over the rookie scoring lead (as well as goal scoring) from the Jets Patrik Laine. Laine had a commanding 17-11 lead in goals on December 6 but he has scored only twice since while Matthews has added nine including two on Monday. Matthews also now has a 32-31 points lead with three games in hand.
Frederik Andersen was solid through the first 53 minutes but gave up four goals on 37 shots. He got the win however and is 16-8-6 with a 2.52 GAA and a .924 save percentage. It was the Leafs fifth straight win.
Coreau took the loss as he started only his fourth career NHL game. He gave up five goals on 28 shots with all five goals coming on the last 11 shots.
He is 2-1-1 with a 3.43 GAA and a .889 save percentage.
Henrik Zetterberg had three assists in the game while Zach Hyman, Jake Gardiner and Brown ( who also scored) each had two assists for Toronto.
Tomas Tatar had two assists for Detroit.
WASHINGTON 2 OTTAWA 1
Taylor Chorney’s first goal of the season was the winner as two of North America’s capital cities competed with Washington defeating Ottawa 2-1.
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