Global Courant 2023-04-30 07:03:00
The Maple Leafs have finally exorcised their playoff demons and are on their way to the second round of the NHL playoffs.
John Tavares scored at 4:36 in overtime and Ilya Samsonov made 31 saves as Toronto beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1 on Saturday to win their series 4-2 to advance in the league for the first time in nearly two decades. late season.
The Leafs captain threw a puck forward in the winning streak that went in through Lightning defenseman Darren Raddysh’s skate to spill Toronto players off the bench.
Auston Matthews had the target in regulation for the Leafs, who lost to Tampa in seven games last spring and were under intense pressure to finally break into the playoffs after a string of failures.
Steven Stamkos answered for the Lightning, which saw their streak of three straight trips to the Stanley Cup Final come to an end. Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 20 shots.
The Leafs last made the NHL’s last eight in 2004 – before the league imposed a salary cap, before Twitter launched and just over four months after Paul Martin became Canada’s 21st Prime Minister – when they defeated the Ottawa Senators in seven matches.
Joe Nieuwendyk was the hero that night with two goals in the first period off a shaky Patrick Lalime. Toronto would lose a second-round game to the Philadelphia Flyers when Jeremy Roenick scored the game-goal goal in overtime in Game 6.
The wait for another series triumph in the largest hockey market would take 6,948 days.
The Leafs opened Saturday with 10 straight losses in games where they had a chance to eliminate an opponent dating back to the beginning of the Matthews-Mitch Marner era in 2018, including a 4-2 loss in Game 5 this spring at the home ice, in the process of stumbling over the first hurdle of the postseason, six years in a row.
Including a first-round loss in 2013, Toronto’s record in games in which it was able to complete a run stood at 0–11 before the puck fell – the second-longest streak in NHL history.
Coming off Cup triumphs in 2020 and 2021 before falling to Colorado in Game 6 at home in last year’s Finals, the Lightning tied the score 1-1 at 4:11 of the third as Stamkos scored his second of the series scored on a rebound.
Matthews opened the scoring at 13:47 of the middle period when he shot a one-timer over Vasilevskiy’s shoulder for his fifth goal of the series. Stamkos hit the post on the power play later in the period to match the crossbar hit by Toronto’s Michael Bunting earlier in the second inning.
Samsonov made a big stop on Stamkos early on in a spirited first before Vasilevskiy rejected TJ Brodie after some good work from Marner.
Toronto had the only power plays in the first 20 minutes, but Tampa got the best short chances from the sticks of Alex Killorn and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare.
With a tornado watch issued for the area canceling the Lightning fans’ viewing party outside Amalie Arena, the Leafs made some lineup changes ahead of Game 6.
Bunting returned after serving a three-game suspension for an illegal check to the head in the series opener on Tampa defenseman Erik Cernak before getting a healthy scratch on Thursday.
Struggling blueliner Justin Holl sat in favor of Timothy Liljegren and Erik Gustafsson, while wingers Zach Aston-Reese and Sam Lafferty also watched from the press box as the Leafs went down 11 forwards and seven defenders.
Tampa defeated Toronto 7-3 in Game 1, but lost Cernak on a series that sidelined the minute-cracking defender for the rest of the series.
Toronto picked up a 7-2 win two nights later before securing back-to-back overtime victories in Tampa, including a 5-4 decision Monday after trailing 4-1 midway through the third period to take a 3-1 series lead over build.
The Lightning responded with that 4-2 victory at the Scotiabank Arena on Thursday to avoid elimination before the Leafs finally sealed the much-anticipated deal on Saturday.
Toronto’s loss to Tampa in the playoffs last year left the organization resigned to that sixth straight opening-round opening, and more thorny questions about roster composition, management philosophy and coaching.
The Original Six franchise chose to stay the course with its expensive core of players, general manager Kyle Dubas and head coach Sheldon Keefe.
The decision paid off.
The Leafs made the playoffs just once in the 11 years following the 2004–05 lockout, with their lone appearance ending in a stunning Game 7 collapse against Boston.
Toronto, which already had Marner, Rielly and William Nylander in its system, then bottomed out in 2015-16 for the right to draft Matthews first overall.
The Leafs returned to the playoffs the following spring, falling to Washington in a solid showing from their young roster.
Toronto followed that up with two more seven-game losses to Boston in 2018 and 2019.
The Leafs were then stumbled into the NHL’s COVID-19 bubble by Columbus in 2020. Toronto dominated the league’s pandemic necessitated North Division in 2021 before taking a 3-1 series lead and losing to Montreal in seven seconds, another stunning low.
The Leafs started to turn a corner last year by going toe-to-toe with the battle-tested Lighting, but lost in a matchup that lasted the whole game despite leading 1-0, 2-1 and 3- 2 in the series, including an OT loss in Game 6 where they led the third period in Tampa.
A year later, all that heartbreak is now definitely a thing of the past.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on April 29, 2023.
