Rosie DiManno: Leafs win one (and William Nylander scores one) for Börje Salming in Minneapolis

Hail (Mary) Matt Murray.

But for the recovered and resurgent and redesignated No. 1 goaltender, the Maple Leafs would likely not have maintained their latter-day relative hotness, nor departed St. Paul after Friday’s matinee encounter with the Wild clinging to a 4-3 win.

Murray, who’s been solid since his return from an adductor injury, might have been displeased with maybe one of the goals he surrendered. Yet he more than compensated with a batch of stellar saves, from among 25 shots turned away, including a couple of breakaways and a manic final minute of regulation time with Marc-André Fleury on the bench for an extra attacker.

The beauty denial was on an unimpeded, short-handed foray by Connor Dewar after Alex Kerfoot couldn’t curtail a jiggly puck at the Minnesota blueline in the closing minute of the second period. Pad save with his right pad, looking into the whites of Dewar’s eyes.

“A bit of a bouncing puck, just hops over our guy’s stick and a clear breakaway, so I just tried to get out and make the play on it, save his face,” said Murray. “(Dewar) made a pretty nice move. I had to get to the rebound, too. The second guy was coming in on me.”

There was some fab, if frantic, stonewalling in the waning moments of the third also with the Wild pressuring hard, six on five, and Murray pulling out a pray-for-me dive on Kirill Kaprizov with 13 seconds on the clock.

“I got a bit fortunate with that one, honestly,” he demurred modestly. “It goes down to (Mats) Zuccarello, I think, who made the pass and I couldn’t really see through our defencemen, so I was late getting across. I think he missed his spot; he shot it right in the middle of the net. If he hits his spot, it makes it a lot harder save.”

Only real problem Murray had — and this may have been suspiciously self-inflicted, certainly the booing crowd at the Xcel Energy Center thought so — was with a cage that kept coming off its moorings. Three times in the afternoon Murray’s net got knocked off, and let us just say he leans rather heavily — rather slyly — into his posts with Wild players buzzing around the vicinity, enough so that he’d drawn a referee warning. Following the third occasion when the net went awry, various officials tried patching the peg hole with slushy ice. When that repair proved insufficient, a maintenance guy came out wielding an electric drill and bored the hole deeper.

“I don’t know what was going on there,” said Murray, figuratively tugging at his forelock. “I use the net to push off all the time, and for whatever reason (today) it came off a little bit easier.”

Fleury had similar, if fewer, net disruptions at the other end of the ice. There were many literally moving equipment pieces in this game. His more vexing issue, however — Fleury resuming the cage following a three-game injury absence — was unusually luscious rebounds granted and a particularly ugly goal by Zach Aston-Reese, pivoting around a defenceman to make it 2-1 at 12:43 of the first: short side, five-hole.

It was Murray who was given The Belt by teammates, a dressing-room honour in recognition of his significant contribution as Toronto racked up points in a seventh straight game. “Murray obviously just stood on his head there, at the end especially,” lauded teammate Mitch Marner, who opened the scoring quick off the hop at 3:42, banking a shot from inside the blue line and stretching his points streak to 15 games, longest run in the NHL this season.

Bit of genius, or at least prescience by coach Sheldon Keefe to elevate Calle Järnkrok on to Marner’s line with John Tavares. The Swede, who was Toronto’s mildly substantive free agent signing last July, hasn’t exactly impressed hugely — not that you’d notice, anyway — but he did click immediately with his new linemates and scored his fifth goal of the season to give Toronto a 3-2 edge midway through the second after Matt Boldy had drawn Minnesota level.

Keefe explained his reasoning after the morning skate: “His game is starting to trend in the right direction … He gives you absolutely everything he has on every shift. To that end, we wanted to give him that opportunity.”

The chemistry was rewarded.

“Brought energy, brought pace, made a lot of great plays off the wall,” Marner said of Järnkrok. “He got the big goal for us there. Ties the guy up in front, and then luckily it bounces right in front of him and he taps it in. I thought for the first game with us he came in quickly and meshed with us really well. We had our looks, we had our opportunities and capitalized on a couple.”

Gradually, after a middling start to the 2022-23 campaign, these Leafs have been rounding into expected form. And they’re doing it now with a lineup severely depleted by injuries as they headed into a three-game road trip. D-man Jordie Benn was the most recent casualty, looking at a week on injured reserve with an upper-body ailment. The Leafs, of course, were already severely hobbled on the back end with Morgan Rielly suffering a knee injury last week (on long-term IR) and Jake Muzzin perhaps never to be seen again this season.

A hasty trade for rearguard Conor Timmins, who wasn’t inserted into the lineup Friday, should hopefully provide some relief for the much-taxed D corps, several of them logging gobs of ice time such as they’ve never known.

Holding down the fort has devolved exceedingly to Justin Holl and 39-year-old Mark Giordano — 23:46 and 23:06, respectively, against the Wild. Holl performed well in his home state, with plenty of friends and family in the stands.

“At the start of the season we were trying to find our identity, figure out how we played best,” Holl observed of Toronto since trending the right way through November. “I feel like we’ve come together. Our goaltending has been phenomenal, given us a chance every night, and we’ve ended up on the right side more often than not.”

The Toronto power play was ineffective, going 0-for-3, with Auston Matthews held pointless for the second game in a row. But William Nylander provided a two-goal cushion with 6:37 left in the game, on a slapshot from the slot that zipped past Fleury’s stick side, his 11th. That stood up as the winner, despite Zuccarello beating Murray with 3:34 left and Fleury pulled, first time ’round.

“It was literally the second opportunity I got,” said Nylander. “Same exact thing from (Michael Bunting) a couple of shifts before.”

Emotions have been fraught these past two days, the Leafs saddened by the death on Thursday of franchise legend Börje Salming, who succumbed to Lou Gehrig’s disease. Players wore Salming patches for the game.

“Obviously a tough emotional day yesterday,” said Nylander, who two weeks earlier had embraced Salming in a stirring centre-ice ceremony for the ailing Hall of Famer at Scotiabank Arena.

“It was nice to get the win for him, and get that goal for him.”

With his goal, Nylander — actually born in Calgary — tied Salming for second-most in Leafs history by a Swede (148), behind only Mats Sundin.

“It’s crazy how those things work out. But yeah, that goal was for Börje, for sure.”

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno