The individual stuff, obviously you want to accomplish stuff,  you want to push yourself to be as good as you can. That’s what I try to do every night. It’s good to continue to push and try to elevate my game and do what I can to help the team win.”

William Nylander and John Tavares each had a goal and two assists, while Bertuzzi, Bobby McMann, and Jake McCabe also scored as the Leafs reasserted themselves after a disappointing effort in Philadelphia the night before.

The offence made a winner of Joseph Woll for the first time since Feb. 29. He stopped 18 of 21 shots for his 10th win of the season.

“He was good,” Keefe said. “There were some chances early in the first period where he had to be really sharp, The guys did a pretty good job in front of him. He had a good game and I’m glad we were able to get him back in and get him a win.”

Matthews vs. Ovechkin

Rarely does the NHL miss a chance to pull out the stops when there’s a marquee matchup and Wednesday night’s game was no exception, with two of the greatest goal scorers of the era going up against each other.

Ovechkin led the Washington offence with two goals, to move within 49 goals of Gretzky’s all-time league record of 894 career goals.

“He’s a world-class player and if we can get the two points and still allow him to add to his total, we’ll take that,” Keefe said.

After a slow start — nine goals in four months — Ovechkin has sprung to life to keep his pursuit of Gretzky’s all-time goal record (894) in sight. The 38-year-old has 14 goals in 21 games in February and March and has brought the Capitals into the wild-card hunt.

“Pucks are going in for him,” Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said. “He’s done a really nice job on the power play. He smells that these are the most important games of the year.

“You can tell he’s been through this a long time and this time of the year is his time to shine.”

But the league was happy to point out that Matthews leads the NHL in goals since entering the league in 2016-17 (356), while Ovechkin ranks fourth over that span.

Matthews’ goals-per-game rate is 0.65 through his first 547 games, higher than Ovechkin’s rate (0.62) over his first 547.

And Ovechkin, whose single-season career high is 65 goals, is rooting for Matthews to get to 70.

“Happy for him, hope he gets it,” Ovechkin said. “He’s a special player. It’s fun to watch.”

Matthews was happy to hear that, calling Ovechkin one of his childhood goal-scoring heroes.

“We’re all kind of running out of words to to describe him,” Matthews said. “He’s the greatest goal scorer of all time. It’s always fun to play against him, the excitement he gets when he scores goals.

“Obviously, you’d like to see him not score against us, but when you’re that good, you’re bound to get opportunities. And he makes good on them most times.”

Flipping the script

Fitting that Matthews opened the scoring. Not only did he add to his total with his 56th goal and move into a tie with five others for 155th in all-time scoring, but he did so quickly. A night after the Leafs played a dud and let Philadelphia score 19 seconds into the game, Matthews scored 16 seconds into Wednesday’s game.

And it was with new-look linemates, with Bobby McMann and Domi on his wings.

Bertuzzi, his normal left-winger, sat on the bench for the first eight minutes of the game. Keefe said he was questionable to play because of an illness. But he eventually got back on with Matthews and Domi.

The entire roster had an interesting look with Keefe scratching struggling defenceman T.J Brodie, who was minus-4 in his last two games and has seemed a shadow of his usually reliable self more often than not this season.

The analytics say Brodie is struggling. He has been on the ice for more high-danger chances against (584) than for (564), the only Leafs defenceman for which that is true.

“He hasn’t been at his best this season, for most of the season, yet he’s taken on a lot for us,” Keefe said. “We’ve been through a lot with our defence. He’s been consistently in there each night, taking on the hardest matchups every single night. This was a chance for us to give him a night off, lighten the load.”