Boston hands Toronto its fourth loss in a row

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On a night made for hockey royalty, the Maple Leafs and Bruins renewed their rivalry at Scotiabank Arena on Friday.

A blue carpet was rolled out to honour this year’s six inductees to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Mats Sundin, one of the most beloved Leafs, was in the house. So was Darryl Sittler, who set an NHL record with 10 points in 1976 when Toronto laid a thumping on Boston.

Fitting of the occasion, the teams engaged in a wildly entertaining game. They almost always bring out the best in one another. Early on, the Maple Leafs blew up and down the ice like Funny Cars. The Bruins dropped Toronto players along the boards with loud thunks.

Back and forth it went. The Maple Leafs kept digging and churning. Zdeno Chara, Boston’s mammoth defenceman, clipped winger William Nylander in the face with his stick but the transgression went undetected. Boston forward Chris Wagner hit Toronto’s Trevor Moore so hard that his helmet blew off. Moore left the game with a shoulder injury and did not return.

When these two opponents square off, the outcome often turns on a razor-thin margin. Too often lately, when the games have counted most, the outcome has gone against the Maple Leafs. Their playoff hopes were scuttled by Boston in each of the past two years.

And so it went again. Brad Marchand scored twice in the third period and the Bruins held on for a 4-2 victory. The much-despised agitator put Boston ahead 11 seconds after the puck drop in the third. Fans booed. They don’t like Boston, and like Marchand even less. That is true in every city in the NHL.

Both sides generated plenty of chances, but Toronto cracked first – on one of those defensive lapses that has doomed the Maple Leafs to mediocrity thus far. Travis Dermott lost track of Charlie Coyle in front of the net and he deposited the puck past Frederik Andersen to give the Bruins a 1-0 lead with 6:12 left in the first period.

Auston Matthews, who leads Toronto in goals and points, continues to play as though he deserves the fat contract he received in January. He knotted the game 1-1 with 10:40 left in the second period on a nifty deflection of a shot by Jake Muzzin as it knuckled toward Tuuka Rask for his 14th goal. The Bruins netminder had been spectacular up until then. So, too, had Andersen.

After Marchand scored at the start of third, Kasperi Kapanen tied things 2-2 with 16:04 remaining.

The meeting was the third of five between the teams this season. They split the first two.

The Bruins entered the game 11-3-4 but had dropped four in a row. In their previous game, they blew a four-goal third-period lead. The Maple Leafs came in 9-7-4 and had lost three in a row. Neither played like a team in the midst of a slide.

For Toronto, it was its third game without forward Mitch Marner, who is expected to miss at least four weeks with an ankle injury, and its first without Alexander Kerfoot. The centre acquired in an offseason trade with Colorado is out indefinitely after undergoing surgery to repair facial dental fractures. The injury occurred against Los Angeles on Nov. 5 but flared up while the team was in Long Island earlier this week.

Jake DeBrusk, David Backes, Brett Ritchie and Torey Krug were all missing from the Bruins lineup. It didn’t show.

Toronto begins a six-game trip in Pittsburgh on Saturday. Its next game at home isn’t until Nov. 30 against the Buffalo Sabres. Kasimir Kaskisuo, who was called up this week from the Toronto Marlies, is expected to make his first NHL start against the Penguins.

The 26-year-old Finn was 6-1-1 in eight games with the AHL farm team, and posted a 2.13 goals-against average and a .928 save percentage. After playing two years at the University of Minnesota Duluth, he spent parts of four seasons with the Marlies and parts of two with the Orlando Solar Bears of the East Coast Hockey League.

“It has been a long road and I have gone through a lot,” Kaskisuo said. “I worked hard for it and waited for it and think I am fully ready. Everybody would probably lie and say they didn’t feel any doubt at some point, but the belief I had that I could some day get here was stronger than that. That drives you every day and got me here.”

The result had to be unsatisfying for the Maple Leafs. They were undone again by those guys from you-know-where. It was a hard-fought win for one team, a frustrating loss for the other. An empty-netter by Chara with 1:33 left shut the door.

″One quarter of the season is done and I think we know we haven’t played to our expectation and where we want to get to," John Tavares, the captain, said earlier in the day. “But we have three-quarters left so there is a lot of hockey ahead."

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article included an incorrect name for the Boston player who hit Trevor Moore.