What was different about Maple Leafs’ power play against the Bruins?

The Toronto Maple Leafs powerplay units have struggled throughout the start of the 2024-25 campaign. But, during Tuesday night’s 4-0 victory over the Boston Bruins, the Maple Leafs powerplay connected three times to find the back of the net, a massive difference.

Today on Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Jon Goyens talk about what was different in Toronto’s powerplay against Boston on Tuesday.

Frank Seravalli: Last night, the Leafs who couldn’t score on the power play, scored a natural hat trick of powerplay goals, three powerplay goals, and beat the Boston Bruins adding an empty netter for nothing. What did you see from their powerplay that was different?

Jon Goyens: Well, first to set it up, it was so anemic, if you will, that it was 4 for 40 on the powerplay. It was 10% before last night, 10%. In fact, they’ve gone one day shy of two weeks without a powerplay goal. To put this in a bigger perspective, over the last 10 years, their cumulative power play percentage has come fourth in the NHL at just over 22% for 10 seasons. That’s how consistent their power play has been. And it’s been the same guys. It’s been Tavares, Rielly, Matthews, Marner, Nylander. And all of a sudden, who are we? We struggle out of the gate and we’re not scoring on the powerplay.

Jon Goyens: So, move Rielly aside, they did that last year when Klingberg was healthy and Rielly wasn’t doing it. Then all of a sudden they realized they had to go back to Rielly. Then, they’ve gone to five forwards, It’s been all over the map. What I saw differently yesterday was they brought basically the band back together. They got Knies to play that net front, that consistent net front. What they were doing was they were attacking the diamond of the Boston Bruins, which has been one of the best PKs in the last few years, to get them out of their diamond formation and open up shooting lanes. So the first four clips are the four power play rules they had scored.