Morgan Rielly's reaction to scoring his first goal of the season was genuinely awesome
For Leafs' star defenseman Morgan Rielly, the 2022-23 season has been a mixed bag. Rielly started strong, posting 16 points in his first 20 games, but then suffered an injury that kept him out of action for over a month. In addition, all of Rielly's points through his first 20 games were assists and he was the subject of a lot of criticism after not having scored a goal all season. That is, until tonight.
Rielly's second period tally put the Leafs up 2-1 and you could tell just how much the goal meant to him after he drifted into the slot to finally rip one home.
Rielly signed a massive 8-year contract extension last season, worth $7.5M per season. This was viewed as an absolute sweetheart deal, given what some of Rielly's counterparts have made around the league on their large extensions. Some, such as Seth Jones and Darnell Nurse, earned more than $9M. However, even though Rielly took less to stay in Toronto, there is still an enormous amount of pressure for him to produce for that type of money.
Hopefully, now that Rielly was able to get the monkey off of his back, he'll be able to settle in and maybe not clutch his stick so tight in the offensive zone and the production will begin to increase. Prior to his goal tonight against the Caps, Rielly had just 5 points in his last 15 games.
