Red Wings in wrong place at wrong time on Auston Matthews’ special night

The Toronto Maple Leafs needed a win Tuesday to clinch home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs, and Auston Matthews was within reach of a special milestone.

Couple that with the Detroit Red Wings’ depleted lineup, and this was destined to be an even tougher task than usual for the visitors.

The Red Wings kept it tight until Matthews notched his second goal of the game and 60th of the season in the third period, lifting the Leafs to a 3-0 victory at Scotiabank Arena.

Matthews is the first NHL player to reach 60 since Steven Stamkos of Tampa Bay in 2011-12 and the first Leaf in the 104-year history of the franchise to score that many.

“When you become the first Toronto Maple Leaf to score 60 goals, given the level of players they’ve had, the history of great, great players, it’s amazing,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “It’s a great, great achievement. I think Auston’s taken his game to another level. He’s been a really good player from the day he stepped into the league, but he’s really taken it to another level on both sides of the puck.

“There’s been more goal scoring this year, so there’s a lot of guys that have produced some pretty high numbers, but 60 is one of those numbers that you never know when you’re going to see it again. It’s unfortunate for us that we had to be part of 59 and 60, but it’s a hell of an achievement for him.”

The Red Wings (31-40-10) were missing forwards Dylan Larkin, Tyler Bertuzzi, Robby Fabbri, Filip Zadina and Adam Erne and defenseman Marc Staal, who entered COVID protocol and will sit out Friday’s season finale at New Jersey as well.

Jack Campbell made 20 saves for his fifth shutout of the season. It is the eight time the Red Wings have been blanked.

“We did a pretty good job of keeping ourselves in position to win the hockey game,” Blashill said. “We’re obviously a bit undermanned here. You’re coming in playing a team that needs the points. At some point you need to capitalize, and you need to turn momentum. We just couldn’t get the momentum because we didn’t score.”

Matthews opened scoring by driving to the net, taking a pass and making a deke to beat Alex Nedeljkovic at 15:48 of the second period.

After John Tavares scored at 4:03 of the third, Matthews fired in a hard wrist shot from the slot at 5:49 for the milestone goal.

“He’s a special talent, one of the top players in the league, probably the top goal-scorer. He’s going to get his looks,” Red Wings forward Sam Gagner said. “You just try to limit them and keep them to the outside as much as you can. Ultimately found a way to break through tonight.”

Matthews is only the third player in the past 26 years to score 60, joining Stamkos and Alex Ovechkin of Washington (2007-08).

“It’s a really hard league to score in now,” Gagner said. “This year there’s been a little bit of a scoring renaissance, I guess. But he’s kind of separated himself. Everyone talks about his shot, but he scores in a bunch of different ways. He’s a guy you got to try to game plan for and limit his time and space. He’s still going to find ways to get looks. It’s one of those games where Ned made some big saves on him, he just ended up finding a way to break through.”

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