William Nylander swung his stick at a fluttering puck before watching it carom into the net.
There was only one issue. The Maple Leafs winger was in front of his own goal.
A team that has been a mess defensively, without a victory in two weeks, and icing a lineup minus seven injured regulars, Toronto found itself in an early hole Tuesday against the St. Louis Blues.
"It could have been like, 'Oh (crap), here we go again,'" said defenceman Jake McCabe. "But we stuck with it."
And then Nylander made amends.
The Swede scored the winner on a mesmerizing solo effort in overtime after some terrific work down low from John Tavares as Toronto picked up a pressure-releasing 3-2 victory that snapped a five-game slide that included four regulation losses.
"A nice win after the tough stretch that we've had," Nylander said. "Just battling and competing to grind out a win."
Toronto was minus four forwards (Auston Matthews, Matthew Knies, Scott Laughton and Nicolas Roy), two defencemen (Chris Tanev and Brandon Carlo) and one goaltender (Anthony Stolarz).
"It's always nice to end the skid," said Leafs head coach Craig Berube, who won the Stanley Cup with St. Louis in 2019 and got the backing of general manager Brad Treliving earlier in the day. "But when I look at the team and everything going on with the injuries and everything, it could have been easy for our guys to say, 'Well, we're all banged up, we've got nobody.' But I didn't get that at all. Our guys competed really hard.
"I'm proud of them, the way they competed and stuck together."
That was especially needed less than two minutes into the first when Nylander's own goal on Toronto netminder Joseph Woll put the club on an early back foot.
"Snipe," Nylander deadpanned when asked about that red-faced sequence. "To be honest, I don't even know what I was thinking … it's a little bit reactionary, I think. But it was nice to feel it back of the net early."
He apologized to his teammate and then went back to work.
"That's elite," Woll said of Nylander's ability to turn the page. "His persona is kind of a superpower, right? He's able to stay pretty even-keeled whatever moment of the game.
"And whether or not he scores on our net or their net, he's pretty much the same."
Toronto forward Steven Lorentz, who bagged the team's second goal after McCabe equalized, said a group that has blown leads and had the heat turned up in a hockey-mad market expecting much more than a 9-9-2 record through 20 games didn't blink.
"We almost just laughed it off," Lorentz said of the 1-0 deficit. "It was kind of just a sign of how things have been going for us lately."
While there hasn't been a lot to get excited about in Toronto over an ugly run of performances, one constant has been the work of the 35-year-old Tavares, who fought off three opponents before helping Morgan Rielly set up Nylander in OT.
"That's what he's all about," Berube said. "That play there symbolizes John Tavares."
Not unlike how Nylander's performance — sometimes head-scratching, sometimes jaw-dropping — symbolized a player that has spent a decade under Toronto's sporting microscope.
"That's something that you've learned playing here," he said. "There are ups and downs, always, in every season. If it's team or personal or whatever, it happens.
"Just gotta stay even."
Especially when the puck goes in the wrong net.
KNIES TO THE SIDE
The big winger was scratched roughly an hour before puck drop with a lower-body injury to take up another spot in sick bay that's already packed.
"He's had a lingering thing for a while," Berube said of Knies, who's listed as day-to-day. "And it got worse."
STEPPING UP
The Leafs dressed defenceman Troy Stecher — claimed off waivers from the Edmonton Oilers over the weekend — and centre Jacob Quillan after he was recalled from the American Hockey League.
"They played a great game," Nylander said. "It's tough coming from the Marlies, playing your first game with the Leafs, and then coming from a completely different team. They did a tremendous job. Look like they'd played here for the entire season."
