SIMMONS: A very different home opener ends well for the Maple Leafs

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It didn’t feel like opening night. How could it in the midst of this global pandemic? How could it when so much of what makes Maple Leafs hockey special, with the most loyal fans in the game, was missing?

Sheldon Keefe felt it before the puck was dropped. In your mind, you have expectations about what a home opener is going to be, about what your first game as a coach, a rookie or a player who’s been around forever, wearing a new uniform. Some guys coming home.

Wayne Simmonds from Scarborough. Joe Thornton from St. Thomas, just on the other side of London. Keefe, the second-year coach beginning his first full, shrunken season, from Brampton. You had wished, Keefe said, that the fans were there and that new players were properly welcomed and the excitement was everything a Maple Leafs opener is supposed to be.

And then the game began, the first of 10 meetings between the Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens. It was scrambly and back and forth and in many ways all over the place, when hockey can be at its best and worst all at the very same time. In the wonky way in which the NHL keeps score, the Leafs win gives them two points, the Montreal loss in overtime gives them one. And the extra points, that may end up deciding playoff positions in the North Division, were already at play.