Matthews scores No. 69, Maple Leafs lose to Red Wings in overtime

TORONTO -- Auston Matthews scored his 69th goal of the season, but the Toronto Maple Leafs lost to the Detroit Red Wings 5-4 in overtime at Scotiabank Arena on Saturday.

Dylan Larkin scored 41 seconds into overtime, redirecting a shot from Patrick Kane at the top of the goal crease on the power play.

"That's one of the biggest of my career and I'm hoping this year to have some more big goals," Larkin said. "You can't feel any better. I knew Kane was going to look for that play, and I just had to have my stick on the ice and he was going to hit it. I didn't even see it go in. ... To see all the boys rush over, man, what a feeling."

The Red Wings would have been eliminated from playoff contention with a regulation loss.

"We've been fighting for our lives here, and the sacrifice, the attitude of the guys has been unbelievable and we got rewarded tonight for all the hard work we've done the last stretch here where we haven't been getting rewarded," Larkin said.

Alex DeBrincat scored twice, and Larkin and David Perron each had a goal and an assist for the Red Wings (39-32-9), who are tied with the Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Eastern Conference. Philadelphia has played on more game, and Washington owns the tiebreaker over Detroit (30 regulation wins versus 27).

James Reimer, who was playing his 500th NHL game and making his first start since March 28, made 32 saves for Detroit, which had lost seven of nine (2-4-3). Alex Lyon had started the past six games.

"It's special. Nights like this, you want to play well and you want to win and it just makes it that much more special," Reimer said.

Mitch Marner had a goal and two assists, Nicholas Robertson and John Tavares each scored, and Ilya Samsonov made 27 saves for the Maple Leafs (46-24-10), who had won six of eight.

Toronto scored three times in the second period to tie the game after trailing 4-1.

"We just started playing more direct," Marner said. "That team has got a lot of firepower throughout their lineup. You [mess] around with the puck in front of them and they can make serious plays… They have very active defense that can find holes too, and we didn't do that very well in the first covering that. I thought going forward we did a much better job."

Robertson cut it to 4-2 at 9:04 when he skated through the neutral zone and shot from the top of the left circle.

Matthews made it 4-3 at 10:23 on the power play with a wrist shot from the left face-off circle. The goal extended his goal streak to eight games (10 goals) and his point streak to 14 games (14 goals, 11 assists).

Matthews became the first player to score 69 goals in a season since Mario Lemieux did so in 70 games in 1995-96.

"He asked me for [a goal] during the game so I gave it to him, but he didn't ask for two," Reimer joked.

Tavares tied it 4-4 at 17:22 of the second.

"The players decided it was important," Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said. "That's it. We know how to play. When we play, we show what we are capable of."

After allowing three goals on 14 shots in the second, Reimer stopped all 18 shots faced in the third period.

"That third period by him was unbelievable," Larkin said. "We were happy to get it to the intermission with how the second period went. Our message was, 'Win a period, win a game.' It ended up going a little extra but we got two points and Reimer was a huge part of it and in his 500th game, I can't be happier for him."

Marner gave the Maple Leafs a 1-0 at 8:35 of the first period on the power play.

DeBrincat tied it 1-1 at 10:02 when he shot blocker-side on a 2-on-1 with Lucas Raymond.

Simon Edvinsson gave the Red Wings a 2-1 lead at 13:39 when he took a pass on a give-and-go with Perron and scored from the left hash marks.

DeBrincat made it 3-1 at 17:37 on the power play when he put in the rebound of J.T. Compher's shot.

Perron extended the lead to 4-1 at 19:41 when he took a pass from Kane, who was behind the net, and scored from the right face-off dot.

"We were obviously playing a very desperate team, a team that's fighting for their lives and they were just much more desperate than us in the first and I just thought we got playing in the second, took it one shift at a time and we were able to battle back," Matthews said.

NOTES: Larkin scored his ninth overtime goal, tying Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shanahan for the second most in Red Wings history behind Sergei Fedorov (12). ... Matthews has 107 points this season, setting a new career high. He had 106 points in 2021-22 (60 goals, 46 assists in 73 games). Matthews is the sixth different Toronto player to have an eight-game goal streak. ... Toronto forward Bobby McMann left the game after the first period with a lower-body injury and did not return. There was no update after the game. Defenseman Jake McCabe took a puck to the face at 16:46 of the second period and did not return. Keefe said he was fine but didn't return due to swelling.