This season also marked only the second time since 2000 where the Leafs won their division, by six points over the Tampa Bay Lightning. Head Coach Craig Berube certainly seems to have a knack for success his first year at the helm. His stints in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and now Toronto have all yielded playoff appearances, with St. Louis resulting in the 2019 Stanley Cup Championship.
After Winnipeg has been run off the rink the past two games against St. Louis in the Western Conference, there are many hopping back on the Toronto bandwagon to break the now 32-year drought of a Canadian team bringing the Cup home.
The Maple Leafs are the New York Yankees of the NHL…everyone wants to own their gear, and everyone either latches on or hates them. The difference is that while the Yankees have not won a World Series since 2009, the Maple Leafs hold the longest drought in NHL history at 57 years (1967). With Edmonton erasing a 3-0 series deficit last June, there was a glimmer of hope in Game 7, but could not find an equalizer the final two periods, and the Florida Panthers extended Canada’s drought with a 2-1 win for their first title.
The adage that “Defense Wins Championships” never applies more in the playoffs than the National Hockey League. We saw a Super Bowl where a team held a 24-0 lead at halftime. Baseball games can get highly lopsided, and no one seems to play defense in the NBA anymore. However, if you have a hot goaltender in the spring, chances are greatly increased that the player will be lifting some type of hardware in June. A goaltender has won the Conn Smythe Trophy six times since 2000, and you could make an argument that Sergei Bobrovsky could have won for Florida last summer over Connor McDavid.
The Maple Leafs may not have a standout goaltender like other teams in the Eastern Conference, but their defensemen are shifting the balance of power away from the other three (Washington, Winnipeg, and Vegas). With their first round series against the Ottawa Senators shifting back to Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday, the Leafs hold a 3-1 series lead, looking to advance to a matchup with the defending-champion Panthers, who hold a 3-1 lead over Tampa Bay.
Entering Tuesday’s action, all four Eastern Conference series are at a 3-1 margin, while all four Western Conference matchups are knotted at 2-2, including the President’s Trophy-winning Winnipeg Jets, who were outscored 12-3 in their last two games in St. Louis.
While the “Core Four” talk of the Leaf’ forwards Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, John Tavares, and William Nylander take up a bulk of the conversation, no one is paying much attention to Toronto’s defensemen having the most goals of any team in the playoffs through four games. In fact, five of Toronto’s 15 goals in the series have come from the blue line, led by Morgan Reilly and Oliver Ekman-Larson with a pair. Simon Benoit’s overtime winner in Game Three is the fifth marker. Edmonton, Carolina, and St. Louis have four, but Benoit’s goal might be the biggest of the playoffs so far for Toronto. The last three games between the Leafs and Sens were all decided in overtime, with the Leafs striking early in Game Two (Max Domi at 3:09) and Game Three (Benoit at 1:19). Ottawa avoided elimination in Game Four with a Jake Sanderson tally at 17:42 of the extra frame on Saturday.
Marner’s seven points are tied for sixth among all scorers in the playoffs, and each of the Core Four has at least one goal in the series. Tavares is expected to play in Game Five, after missing more than 10 minutes being evaluated for a concussion in Game Four, where he took a hard check against the boards. Tavares returned to play three shifts in the third period.
I mentioned that Stolarz may not be the flashiest name in the goaltending pool of the 16 teams remaining, but his performance has far exceeded what his numbers may reflect. Despite a playoff-worst .902 save percentage, his 2.29 goals allowed places him fourth-best among goaltenders that have at least one start in their series. Ottawa was held to just two goals each in the first three games, but jumped on the board with two in the first 14 minutes of Game Four. After the Leafs’ evened the score midway through the second period, David Perron put the Sens ahead at 7:32 of the third period. Ekman-Larsson tied the game with just over five minutes remaining, and Sanderson scored unassisted in possibly the final home game for Ottawa before the fall.
The fact that Toronto is winning the close games in the opening round they normally would lose shows that this is entirely a different Leafs squad from year’s past.
Remember that we have seen examples of Toronto being up 3-1 in a playoff series, and going home less than a week later. The Leafs have not closed out a playoff series leading 3-1 since 1963.
-JC24