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Gaudreau quietly positioned himself behind the defence pair of Morgan Rielly and TJ Brodie early in the period, and had a few seconds to gather his thoughts and put the puck past Andersen at 1:08.
Just 61 seconds later, Boyd scored on a feed from Engvall, getting a shot under Markstrom’s right arm to restore the Leafs’ two-goal lead. The play started with a smart stretch pass from Jake Muzzin to Engvall.
Milan Lucic beat Andersen from the slot at 14:21, putting Calgary within one again.
If there was a better first period for the Leafs in recent memory, well, we don’t remember it.
Toronto not only had a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes, it had 10 shots on goal to the Flames’ one, which came late. The Leafs record for fewest shots against in a period is zero, done against Anaheim in October 2008.
Wayne Simmonds scored for the second time in as many games, shoving his own rebound past Markstrom at 3:44 after his initial shot came off a Justin Holl rebound.
The Leafs got their second at 14:16 on a power play when Auston Matthews, scoring for the third game in a row, ripped a shot into the net after taking a pass from Marner.
The Flames, meanwhile, got next to nothing, and had just nine attempts in total in the period.
Bogosian made his best play as a Leaf, smartly breaking up a two-on-one.
As a team, the Leafs were structured in five-man units and didn’t let the Flames get much going through the neutral zone.
Three of the Leafs’ four goals were during five-on-five play. The Leafs had just 10 goals at five-on-five through their first seven games.
“It’s something we’re addressing and we’re focused on,” Tavares said earlier in the day. “The ability is there with the quality we have on our hockey team. We want to find ways to break the opponent down, get off the wall a little bit more, find ways to create more motion and get into the interior side of the ice to get quality looks.”
tkoshan@postmedia.com
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