In their 58-year absence of a Stanley Cup, one of two gifted Maple Leafs could not miss taking part when a clear window set up a smash-and-grab of the four-handled Four Nations Face-Off Trophy.
Mitch Marner, whose fingerprints were on two goals including Connor McDavid’s winner, won the border war against Auston Matthews, in a Boston barn where Toronto was eliminated three times in a first-round Game 7 series in which he and Matthews had little consolation of being their team’s leading scorer.
As he’s set up Matthews 145 times on his 388 regular-season goals, Marner took a puck around the backboard and in a blink spotted McDavid in a red, white and blue box in the slot. Game over, 3-2.
The years since 1967 haven’t been a total wasteland when considering the role of Toronto players in a best-on-best tournament. It starts with Paul Henderson saving the nation’s back bacon in 1972, with three winning goals on Russian ice in the Summit Series, the last with 34 seconds to go in a win-it-all Game 8.
Four years later, Darryl Sittler delivered the overtime dagger to beat Czechoslovakia in the deciding game of the first Canada Cup. While it’s a stretch to say brief Leaf Martin Prochazka was a difference maker when the Czechs beat out a Toronto-less Team Canada en route to the 1998 Olympic title in Nagano when NHLers were first allowed, Mats Sundin came back to Scotiabank Arena with gold in 2006 from Turin.
