Red Wings-Maple Leafs exhibition quick take: Tweetcap of the Wings’ 4-3 overtime loss to Toronto

The Detroit Red Wings began to wrap up their 2023 preseason by kicking off a home-and-home series with the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday night at Scotiabank Arena.

Toronto dressed all but a start-of-the-season lineup against Detroit’s “B Team,” and Toronto’s results were surprising to some extent–a 4-3 overtime win over the Red Wings, thanks to the dominance of Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Mitch Marner.

To be honest, Alex Lyon was valiant in goal, stopping 34 of 38 Toronto shots, and the Red Wings got goals from the ever-excellent Nate Danielson, a steady Jonathan Berggren and a surprisingly plucky Dominik Shine to force OT.

The teams will reprise their rivalry at Little Caesars Arena on Saturday night (7 PM EDT start on Bally Sports Detroit/TSN4/ESPN+, 97.1 FM), with Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde suggesting that it will be the Wings’ turn to engage in a “dress rehearsal” for the regular season.

In the 1st period, well…Hoo boy. The game was supposed to air on ESPN+, and it was taken off ESPN+ around 6:30 PM EDT. So everybody looked for DetroitRedWings.com, which promised a stream of the Canadian TSN4 feed.

And that didn’t happen.

So those of us who tried to watch the game had to bootleg it until we found it on Center Ice on XFinity/Comcast, so the 1st period was a disastrous set of Tweets.

So let’s go!

The Red Wings dressed the following lineup…

Toronto opened the scoring only 3:24 into the 1st period. William Nylander fired a Mitch Marner pass into the goal behind Alex Lyon, making it 1-0 Toronto…

But just over 2 minutes later, at 5:46, Jonathan Berggren swiped a faceoff loss, rimmed it back to Ben Chiarot and Shayne Gostisbehere, they exchanged the puck, and Gostisbehere’s shot was tipped in by Nate Danielson. 1-1.

On the power play, Jonatan Berggren took a fantastic feed from Gostisbehere, paused, set up and scored a great goal on Ilya Samsonov at 11:15, making it 2-1 Detroit…

But the Leafs tied it with 8 seconds left in the 1st, thanks to more passing from Mitch Marner and a fine finish by John Tavares. The score was 2-2.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3Z-K6Ejzv4M%3Fsi%3DBq14jxpkiCGE1CRG

In the 2nd period, Detroit made a terrible turnover as Marco Kasper pushed the puck back into his own zone, where Jared McIsaac muffin’ed the puck to Tyler Bertuzzi, who ripped a roofer over Alex Lyon at 8:12, making it 3-2 Toronto…

But Dominik Shine would tie the game at 3 at 18:25, thanks to a bad turnover by Ilya Samsonov that Joe Veleno plucked and passed to Shine, who went forehand backhand past Samsonov to tie the game 3-3.

In the 3rd period, Detroit was out-shot significantly–14 to 3–and Toronto seemed to be laying the groundwork for a win, but Alex Lyon would make a dramatic save at the last second, Detroit would tip a Leaf shot attempt wide, and the Wings escaped a very bad high stick by Simon Edvinsson on Tyler Bertuzzi–Edvinsson’s second high-stick on Bertuzzi during the game–to force overtime.

In overtime, the Wings had a couple of flourishes, but Toronto managed to get Matthews and Nylander out opposite Veleno, Fischer and Chiarot…

Matthews raced into the Wings’ zone, regrouped as Veleno pulled away from #34, Matthews found William Nylander in the slot and he tipped a weird wrister off Ben Chiarot’s stick and into the back of the net. 4-3 Toronto win, at 1:34 of overtime.

Highlights: Sportsnet and NHL.com posted highlight clips:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=qYYA-pokikE%3Fsi%3D5L76I_NZna8heWe8
https://youtube.com/watch?v=rEQR5xvaTws%3Fsi%3DREFgmrPl_yQD6H6z

Statistics: Here are the Game Summary and Event Summary:

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, and have worked with MLive and Kukla's Korner. Thank you for reading!