Patched-up Maple Leafs lineup emerges with win in Montreal

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This wasn’t the best first impression the Maple Leafs wanted to make with their new uber-boss in the house.

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But at least Keith Pelley, the incoming president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, got to see a 3-2 win at the Bell Centre in Montreal.

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While not officially taking duties until the start of April, Pelley is home from Europe. After watching Toronto FC play at BMO Field earlier in the day, he headed to the road game where club president Brendan Shanahan was also in attendance.

They both saw coach Sheldon Keefe conduct what amounted to a fire drill, two key players out, two new ones in, with altered lines and defensive pairings.

John Tavares’ third-period goal broke the tie, as Toronto played without injured sniper Mitch Marner, made defenceman Simon Benoit a controversial healthy scratch and unveiled defenceman Joel Edmundson and centre Connor Dewar.

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They survived a 6-on-4 Montreal power play and a 6-on-5 in the final minutes, with Ilya Samsonov making the last of his 29 saves.

While the Leafs are trying to get dialled in on defence for April, they beat Montreal by creating several odd-man rushes that resulted in their first goals. But gifted a power play to open the third period, Toronto created zero pressure, then gave up the tying goal to Alex Newhook with Timothy Liljegren in the box.

Tavares drove the net for his 20th of the year, the 14th time in his NHL career he’s reached that milestone and his 400th point as a Leaf, ninth fasted to that mark in just 422 games.

He knocked in a long, well-placed Jake McCabe point shot past Samuel Montembeault and the Leafs went on to survive a late Calle Jarnkrok penalty.

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Keefe came back from the team’s day off to find Marner unavailable with a lower body issue, possibly an ankle, after falling awkwardly on a scoring chance late in Thursday’s 4-1 loss to Boston. With a four-day break after Saturday, it made sense to rest him and gave Keefe an excuse to move Tyler Bertuzzi back up to Auston Matthews’s line, an early season experiment the coach wanted to re-visit before the playoffs. William Nylander was placed on the right side in Marner’s spot, with regular left winger Matthew Knies at least able to start on Saturday after leaving Thursday’s game in Boston when he collided with Brad Marchand.

The new first line was caught up ice on its first shift when Ilya Lyubushkin’s drop pass was picked off and defenceman Mike Matheson beat a cold Samsonov with a nice deke.

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Keefe wasn’t thrilled with what he saw from Matthews, Nylander and Bertuzzi.

“They weren’t very good,” he told the media afterwards. “They just individually weren’t very good. It’s a night where the group picked them up, so that’s good.”

A near 10-minute delay for a broken pane of glass allowed Toronto to re-focus, including the newly-grouped Knies, David Kampf and Bobby McMann, who generated many of Toronto’s nine shots in the period.

That trio was rewarded with the starting shift of the middle period, with McMann stealing the puck at Toronto’s line and working his way to a 2-on-1 with Knies. Hanging on to the puck, he flicked in his 10th of the year.

Max Domi, back on the left side in this temporary alignment with Tavares at centre and Jarnkrok on the right, busted through two Habs for a breakaway go-ahead goal versus his old team late in the second.

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It was much harder for Keefe to tell Benoit he was sitting a game in his hometown as he worked Edmundson into the lineup with Liljegren and tried to assess the most workable pairs of right and left-handed defencemen.

Morgan Rielly marked his 30th birthday, but it included two minutes for interference that negated Toronto’s first power play.

Dewar’s taste of action included the penalty kill role he’ll be filling when McMann served a second-period minor.

There was no clarity in the standings on the Leafs’ first round opponent as Boston and Florida both won on Saturday to stay nine and 10 points ahead, respectively.

Samsonov played well again after Joseph Woll absorbed a couple of 4-1 losses to Boston.

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