Maple Leafs, Red Wings send NHL fans into frenzy with 17-goal thriller

Well, "it was 4-1" was almost replaced with "it was 7-2."

The ever-entertaining Maple Leafs were visiting the Red Wings on Saturday night and what started as a typical beatdown by Toronto nearly turned into something that fans would not hear the end of for decades.

After 40 minutes of action, the Leafs were up 7-2, boosted by a Mitch Marner natural hat trick and a goal each from Auston Matthews and William Nylander. The visitors were walking all over the home team.

But then, the Leafs had a typical and familiar collapse.

Within the first 5:21 of the third period, the Red Wings scored four goals, giving the entire city of Toronto sudden flashbacks to multiple infamous blown leads. Almost every puck sent somewhere near the Leafs’ net ended up behind Jack Campbell or Petr Mrazek. Some real vintage 1980s hockey was happening in the Motor City.

And it wouldn’t be an entertaining Leafs game if there wasn’t a second wave of potential heartbreak, as rookie sensation Lucas Raymond cut the lead down to just one once again after Ilya Mikheyev notched his ninth goal of the season to make it 8-6. It’s truly too many goals to follow, but it all ended with a 10-7 win for Toronto in what was the highest scoring game of the NHL season.

If you need to know how the winning team felt about that near-extreme embarrassment, all you have to do is look at Marner’s face after the final whistle.

And as always, Twitter was set ablaze the moment it felt the Leafs could blow yet another game in an unimaginable way.

The last time the Leafs scored 10 goals was in a game against the Boston Bruins on Jan. 4, 2007, where they ended up winning 10-2 by way of an Alex Steen hat trick and Matt Stajan earning four points. Wow.

Next, the Leafs will be facing Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals on Monday. Maybe they can keep it boring and allow just five or six goals.

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