Marner scores twice as Maple Leafs win first-ever meeting with Utah Hockey Club

Mitch Marner scored twice in a second-period surge as the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Utah Hockey Club 3-2 Sunday to extend their winning streak to four.

The victory, in the lone NHL game on the schedule, came in the first-ever meeting between Toronto and Utah.

William Nylander scored his 14th for Toronto, which had been off since Wednesday’s 3-0 home win over Vegas. Marner’s seventh and eighth goals of the season moved him past Syl Apps (201) into 14th place on the Leafs’ all-time goal list.

Logan Cooley and Jack McBain scored for Utah, which was playing its first back-to-back games of the season after snapping a three-game losing streak with a 6-1 win Saturday in Pittsburgh. McBain’s tip-in early in the third cut the Leafs’ lead to 3-2.

Toronto captain Auston Matthews (upper body injury) missed his eighth game in a row but there is hope he may return this week. The Leafs have gone 7-1-0 in his absence.

Toronto was also without the injured Matthew Knies, Max Domi, David Kampf, Max Pacioretty and Calle Jarnkrok and the suspended Ryan Reaves.

Alex Nylander, signed this week from the AHL Marlies, made his Leafs debut and saw time on the power play with older brother William in the first period. The Nylanders become the 13th set of brothers to play for the franchise and the fifth set to play together for the Leafs.

Takeaways 

The traffic in Toronto sucks, especially the day of the Santa Claus parade. The Nylander brothers took the subway to the rink and Utah players also went to Plan B, leaving their bus to walk the final few blocks to the Scotiabank Arena.

Key Moment

Down 1-0 after a sluggish opening period, Toronto turned it up in the second with three goals in five minutes 35 seconds. The Leafs outshot Utah 16-6 in the period.

Key Stat

Marner has six goals and eight assists in the eight games that Matthews has been out. He now has multi-point games in seven of his last eight outings, upping his season total to 11. Only Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov has more multi-point games, with 12.

Up next

Toronto heads to Florida to face the Panthers on Wednesday and Tampa Bay on Saturday. Utah wraps up its four-game road trip Wednesday in Montreal.