TORONTO — The Chicago Blackhawks rallied from a three-goal deficit, but a crucial error in judgement by goalie Kevin Lankinen led to a 5-4 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday at Scotiabank Arena.
Lankinen went behind the net to play a high puck off a dump-in, but it bounced in front of the net and Lankinen failed to scramble back in time to stop former Hawk David Kampf from scoring the wide-open game-winner with just 1 minute, 20 seconds left in the third period.
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The Hawks started off with thoughts of an upset.
Just 1 minute, 53 seconds into the game, Jonathan Toews scored for a second straight night after coming up empty in the previous 25 games, the longest drought of his career. Connor Murphy sent the puck out of the Hawks’ end to Reese Johnson, made a quick relay pass at the blue line to Toews.
Toews made a little stick-handling move to freeze two defenders, fired it past Petr Mrázek and gave a hard fist pump in celebration.
From that point, the Hawks did themselves in with more penalty problems.
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They entered the game having allowed four goals in the last 11 pentaly-kill opportunities, and the Leafs enjoyed similar success Saturday.
Hawks forward Reese Johnson tripped Jake Muzzin, and 1:01 after Toews’ goal, John Tavares evened up the score with a strike from the left dot.
William Nylander then cut through a nonexistent neutral-zone defense, got the puck on Tavares’ behind-the-goal pass and sneaked it past Lankinen’s glove side at 9:14 of the first.
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A little more than five minutes later, Auston Matthews scored another power-play goal that pingponged around the goal mouth.
Pierre Engvall opened the second period with a whip-around wrister, and it looked as if the Hawks were on the business end of another blowout by an elite team. But a couple of hard-work plays got the rally going.
Brandon Hagel dug the puck out of a board battle in the offensive zone and dropped it off to Connor Murphy for a second-period strike.
The Hawks stunned the Leafs 1:47 into the third.
Philipp Kurashev outraced two Leafs to a loose puck to slap it over to Dominik Kubalik, who beat Mrázek one-on-one.
Jake McCabe scored from the blue line to tie it 4-4 with 9:18 left in the third.
