Maple Leafs top Golden Knights in shootout

TORONTO -- Nazem Kadri scored two goals in the first period, and Frederik Andersen made three straight saves in the shootout to help the Toronto Maple Leafs to a 4-3 win against the Vegas Golden Knights at Air Canada Centre on Monday.
James van Riemsdyk also scored in the first period for the Maple Leafs (9-7-0), who lost their previous two games and five of their past six. Andersen made 25 saves.

"Anytime you've been in a bad spell it's usually ugly when you come out of it, but it's a win and now we can breathe and get playing," Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock said.
WATCH: [All Golden Knights vs. Maple Leafs highlights]
Mitchell Marner scored in the shootout.
"I was just trying to take a look at the puck quickly to calm it down and look at the goalie and kind of go eye-to-eye and see what he's going to react to," said Marner, who had to settle the puck as it started to roll when he reached the top of the circle. "It stayed on my stick luckily and didn't bounce over."
James Neal, Reilly Smith and Deryk Engelland scored and Maxime Lagace made 22 saves for the Golden Knights (9-4-1), who are 1-3-1 in their past five games.
Vegas trailed 3-1, but Smith scored a power-play goal at 18:50 of the second period when he put in a rebound off the end boards on a point shot from Colin Miller. Engelland put a wrist shot over Andersen's blocker at 6:16 of the third period to tie it 3-3.

"We had a good push back after they went up a couple of goals, so I think that's a positive," Neal said. "We did some good things, we were playing hard and we had some good chances in overtime to end it."
Andersen, who had lost four of his past five starts, made five saves in overtime and said he felt he shouldn't have allowed Engelland's tying goal.
"I wasn't too happy about the third goal, so I definitely wanted to make sure I made up for it and I was glad we battled back and got the extra point," Andersen said.
Kadri gave the Maple Leafs a 1-0 lead with a power-play goal at 4:14 of the first period.
Neal tied it 38 seconds later when Erik Haula's shot deflected off his left skate at the side of the net past Andersen's blocker.

Van Riemsdyk gave Toronto a 2-1 lead at 9:31 of the first period. Auston Matthews carried the puck into the Golden Knights zone on the right wing, spun around defenseman Luca Sbisa and got a shot on net. Van Riemsdyk, who had gone six games without a goal, put the rebound between Lagace's legs.
"I think the interesting part about him is picking your spots when you support him and picking your spots to almost kind of leave him isolated like in basketball where he's 1-on-1 against someone because he's so good at keeping the puck away from guys," van Riemsdyk said of Matthews. "If you can dart in, all the other guys on the ice are aware of him so you can find some quiet areas, and that's what I did and was able to shovel it in."
Kadri took a pass from Patrick Marleau and put a backhand shot between Lagace's legs at 17:20 of the first period to make it 3-1.
The Golden Knights had a 5-on-3 power play for 1:12 in the second period but failed to score.

Goal of the game

Engelland's goal at 6:16 of the third period.

Save of the game

Andersen's save against David Perron with 25 seconds left in overtime.

Highlight of the game

Van Riemsdyk's goal at 9:31 of the first period.

They said it

"I thought for the most part, we played a pretty solid game. For a little bit in the first, we were back on our heels a bit and they came out flying. We battled back, played the rest of the game and kept going and to get that point, it's good. We definitely could have come out with two points there; we had a lot of chances but to get that one point, that's big." -- Golden Knights defenseman Deryk Engelland
"When they scored that third goal, we just had to breathe and be patient and understand that we felt like we had controlled a lot of the game. Just staying with it, I think that's really what it was. When you are vulnerable team, sometimes that's hard to do. But I'm proud of our effort tonight." -- Maple Leafs forward Nazem Kadri

Need to know

Vegas could have matched the NHL record for the fewest games to reach 10 wins in an inaugural season, set by the Montreal Canadiens (10-4-0) in 1917-18. … Marner has scored four goals on nine shootout attempts (44.4 percent) in his career.

What's next

Golden Knights: At the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday (7:30 p.m. ET; TSN2, RDS, ATTSN-RM, NHL.TV)
Maple Leafs: Host the Minnesota Wild on Wednesday (7:30 p.m. ET; SN, TVA Sports, FS-N+, NHL.TV)