Andersen tops Woll in great goalie duel as Canes edge Leafs

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In 2016, the same year that Frederik Andersen started a four-year tenure in the Maple Leafs crease, the club drafted Joseph Woll.

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Past met present on Sunday at Raleigh, N.C., in a superb goaltending duel, with 75 shots that yielded just three goals, in a 2-1 Hurricanes win.

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Woll made 41 stops, but Andersen shut down one of his closest friends, NHL leading scorer Auston Matthews, and his former team through two and a half periods before Nick Robertson scored.

But after six straight games of scoring three or more goals — including six the night before against Edmonton — the Leafs were mostly stymied. They were 0-for-4 on the power play, with 6-on-4 time before the final buzzer.

Andersen did have a couple of pucks get behind him that the Leafs couldn’t whack over the line. But just when it seemed that Toronto’s NHL-leading streak of not being shut out in 214 games would end, Robertson atoned for some earlier mistakes with his 10^th goal this year. The assist went to Matthews on a line change as the Leafs extended the eighth-longest streak in league history.

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Andersen, who spent three months recovering from a life-threatening blood-clotting condition, is now on a roll of 6-0 since and has been the Canes’ best goalie since they put the finishing touches on their playoff roster at the trade deadline two weeks ago. He had the fourth-most wins in Leafs history before being let go as Toronto went in another direction that included the development of Woll.

Neither Carolina goal was his fault in a season-high 41 saves that incorporated a Jake Guentzel penalty shot. Now the question is whether Ilya Samsonov is good to go Tuesday at home versus New Jersey after leaving Saturday following Edmonton’s third goal late in the final period. Coach Sheldon Keefe said after that game the undisclosed injury was not as bad as first thought, but it there’s any doubt, look for No. 3 Martin Jones against the Devils.

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After wrapping up their conference play against the West 24-6-2, Sunday began the final 13 against the East to complete the regular season.  It was the third one-goal win by Carolina over Toronto in this year’s now completed season’s series and was a missed chance to close the gap on Boston and Florida in the Atlantic Division.

BALLAD OF BRODIE

In a worst-case scenario for defenceman TJ Brodie after two games off to ‘clear’ his head according to Keefe, he and Jake McCabe got mixed up in their zone on their first shift. McCabe’s pass in front was picked off for a Brady Skjei goal.

Sebastian Aho then banked a power-play goal in off McCabe’s leg, completing a period where the Leafs D-man was boarded heavily by Andrei Svechnikov.

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Brodie and the flu-ridden Ilya Lyubushkin came back into the lineup as Keefe again chose the heart and soul Simon Benoit to sit along with the more obvious choice in Conor Timmins. Brodie had a chance to score in an otherwise clean game for him.

FREE RIDES

Guentzel and the Hurricanes found himself with the penalty shot after Joel Edmundson pawed a puck in Woll’s crease early in a David Kampf minor. But he did not get Woll to bite, the young Leafs goalie stopping his second career penalty shot.

The Canes have seen all three Leafs goalies, with Jones losing 3-2 in December.

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