John Tavares Leaves With an Injury as the Maple Leafs Blow a 4-2 Lead and Lose to Buffalo in Overtime

TORONTO

There are losses, and then there are nights that take something from you on the way out. Thursday was the second kind for the Toronto Maple Leafs. In their first home game after a three-game road trip, the Leafs built a 4-2 lead over the Buffalo Sabres, watched veteran forward John Tavares leave early in the third period after an awkward collision, and then gave the game away — 5-4 in overtime — while the building was still thinking about the man who had skated off favouring his left leg.

The moment the building went quiet

Early in the third period, in the defensive zone, Sabres forward Josh Norris slid into Tavares' legs, according to Daily Faceoff and Yardbarker's accounts of the play. Tavares collapsed to the ice and stayed down for some time before getting to his feet with assistance — defenseman Jake McCabe among those helping him — and skating off. He did not return. The Associated Press-style game recap carried by WorldByte News noted he appeared to favour his left leg on the way off.

After the game, head coach Jim Hiller provided no update on Tavares' status, per Daily Faceoff, and Athlon reported the 36-year-old was expected to be evaluated on Friday. That silence is the whole story this morning. Toronto wakes up Friday not knowing whether it lost its second-line driver for a night, a week, or considerably longer — and in this market, the not-knowing is its own kind of loud.

The collapse that followed

It is hard to separate what happened next from what had just happened. Toronto's 4-2 lead was built handsomely: Auston Matthews opened the scoring, and Kirill Marchenko — playing his 300th NHL game, on a reshuffled second line with Tavares moved to left wing beside center Nick Paul — completed a hat trick, the fifth of his career, with Tavares assisting on two of the goals. It should have been Marchenko's night. The Leafs Nation's instant reaction called it the dominant performance the club envisioned when it acquired him, right down to a between-the-legs power-play finish.

Then Tavares went down, and Buffalo scored three unanswered. Jack Quinn had already scored twice for the Sabres; in the third, defensemen Dennis Gilbert and Mattias Samuelsson scored to tie it 4-4, and Owen Power finished the comeback in overtime. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 26 saves for Buffalo (4-3-1), while Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 29 for Toronto (3-3-2). Two Leafs goals off the rush undid the lead in minutes, as The Leafs Nation put it — a team that looked, understandably, like its mind was somewhere in the trainer's room.

Some necessary context on the line that produced those goals: Marchenko arrived from the Columbus Blue Jackets in a trade on Sept. 28, just before the season, per the AP-style recap, and spent his first seven games as a Maple Leaf on Matthews' line, scoring only once. Before Thursday, Hiller shook the lines up — William Nylander moved up to the top line with Matthews, and Marchenko dropped onto Tavares' wing. For two periods it looked like the smartest decision of Toronto's young season: the new second line was driving play, and Tavares, the playmaker of the trio, was at the center of it. That is what makes the injury sting beyond one game — the Leafs had just found a combination that worked, and its engine is the man being evaluated on Friday.

What Tavares still means to this team

Strip away the former captain's letter and the $77 million contract he signed in 2018, and the on-ice case is simple. Tavares has two goals and five assists in seven games this season, per Daily Faceoff. Last season he played all 82 games — every single one, at 35 — and finished second on the team with 71 points, 31 goals and 40 assists. In nine seasons in Toronto he has 255 goals and 569 points in 603 games, 11th on the franchise's all-time list. He is the classic second-line anchor: the net-front tip, the faceoff you need won, the shift that settles a game down. Thursday, Hiller had just moved him to the wing to unlock Marchenko, and it was working beautifully — until it wasn't.

The depth picture behind him is not comforting, either. Defenseman Chris Tanev is already on injured reserve with an upper-body injury, considered week-to-week after getting hurt against Colorado, as Athlon noted. If Tavares misses time, the Leafs will have to reshuffle a forward group that has leaned on him in a major offensive role from opening night — more minutes for Matthews' line, more responsibility for a middle six that was only just retooled around him.

Answers Friday, Islanders Saturday

The schedule, as ever, refuses to care. Toronto hosts the New York Islanders — Tavares' first team, the one that drafted him first overall in 2009 — on Saturday, then finishes the homestand against San Jose on Monday. The Islanders game was always going to come with its own Tavares subplot. Now it may come with a lineup card missing his name entirely, and against his old club, no less.

Everything hinges on Friday's evaluation. A lower-leg injury from a player sliding into your legs can be a bruise, a sprain, or the start of a long absence, and nobody in Toronto — not the coach, not the team — pretended to know Thursday night. Marchenko's hat trick deserved a better ending. So did the 4-2 lead. But the only score that matters to Leafs fans this weekend is whatever the medical staff finds on Friday. Follow the updates on the Previously sports desk.