Columnist image

TSN Toronto Maple Leafs Reporter

| Archive

​The Maple Leafs’ season ended with a thud on Wednesday, when they fell 7-4 to the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of their first-round Stanley Cup playoff series. In what started as a back-and-forth affair, where the Leafs ahead by one goal after two periods, Toronto had its continued playoff hopes dashed in the third by a hungry Boston team that didn’t give up a shot on goal in the final eight minutes of the game en route to sealing the best-of-seven series’ win. 

TAKEAWAYS

Had it in hand

The Leafs got off to as good a start as they could have hoped for against the Bruins, scoring the game's first goal and showing the kind of intensity befitting of a Game 7. But with so much experience playing one another over the last two weeks, a season-deciding game was filled with ups and downs for both teams. 

Rookie Jake DeBrusk scored twice for the Bruins, their first and second-to-last goals of the game, and both were exceedingly important for Boston. After Patrick Marleau scored his first of two goals on a Leafs’ power-play just over a minute into the first period, DeBrusk was there less than three minutes later to counter with a power-play goal for Boston. Both scores came off tips in front of the net, and would set a tone of sorts for how the rest of the game would go, with the division rivals swapping lead changes right into the third. 

In short order, it was Marleau’s turn again to give Toronto back its advantage, capitalizing off a terrific play by Mitch Marner to feed him in the left circle for a one-timer past Tuukka Rask. Right on script, it was less than three minutes later that the first career playoff goal by Danton Heinen evened the score. With just 9:10 gone off the clock, the Bruins and Leafs had combined for four goals on 11 shots. And both teams were far from done. 

Patrice Bergeron gave the Bruins their first lead of the game with 36 seconds left in the opening frame by taking advantage of Boston’s active end boards. He corralled a puck that came flying out from there and buried it behind Frederik Andersen before the goalie could recover to the right side of his net.

That lead didn’t last long, either. There was another career-first coming just 2:07 into the third period, when defenceman Travis Dermott buried his first NHL playoff goal with a bouncing puck that ricocheted off David Pastrnak and over Rask. 

There were seven different lead changes by the midway point of the second period, when Kasperi Kapanen scored shorthanded to give Toronto a 4-3 advantage. But the pace of the game really settled down in that frame, with both teams playing less frantic hockey than they did in the first.

While skating 4-on-4 early in the third, Bruins defenceman Torey Krug tied the game once again with a one-timer past Andersen. Toronto had won the draw but Ron Hainsey couldn’t get control of the puck, which is how it ended up back at the point with Krug. From there, it was all Bruins – the Leafs only had eight shots that entire period, and DeBrusk’s go-ahead goal felt like a dagger. By the time Pastrnak added the insurance marker with over eight minutes to play (and well before Brad Marchand potted an empty-netter), the game felt too far out of Toronto’s control to come back from. 

Quiet night (and series) for Leaf  stars

All season long, the Leafs had been driven by their high-powered offence. Toronto had three 30-goal scorers in Auston Matthews, James van Riemsdyk and Nazem Kadri, while Marner and William Nylander both had more than 60 points. But with the Leafs’ season on the line, Nylander and Marner were the only ones of the five who registered anything on the scoresheet (two assists for Nylander and one for Marner). For Marner, it was his team-leading ninth point of the postseason.

Matthews, van Riemsdyk, Kadri and Nylander combined for just 12 points over the series (although Kadri missed three games due to a suspension). It wasn’t enough for Toronto, not when the Bruins’ big line of Bergeron, Marchand and Pastrnak rebounded from being held off the scoresheets in Game 5 and Game 6 with a combined seven-point performance in Game 7 (three goals, four assists). 

From Matthews, especially, the Leafs needed (and probably expected) much more. And it’s not that he wasn’t generating more scoring chances as the series went on; it’s that despite his efforts, Matthews wasn’t able to bury nearly enough of them. He had his legs going early in Game 7, and Boston wasn’t hard-matching Matthews against the Bergeron line as they had done before at home.

The sophomore tried to take advantage of what open ice there was by getting to the front of the net and hounding out pucks, like he did in putting a spin move on Rask in the first period that ultimately went nowhere. Matthews continued to try and establish his offensive game, but it was his play on defence that was standing out more. He made a couple strong back-checking moves to force turnovers in the Leafs’ end and was engaged on that side of the puck, but once he got into the Bruins’ zone there was very little happening as Game 7 wore on. 

In the end, Matthews finished the postseason with 27 shots on goal, a minus-4 rating and just two points, from his game-winning goal back in Game 3 and an assist in Game 5. Van Riemsdyk finished with just one even-strength point (an assist) and three power-play goals, while Nylander had four points and Kadri had two. 

Two out of three? Not good enough

If it weren’t for Andersen’s terrific performances in both Game 5 and Game 6 of this series, Wednesday’s Game 7 would never have been possible. Andersen had outplayed Rask to keep the Leafs’ season alive, and he did exactly that again on Wednesday for two periods, making all the big saves Toronto needed to try and propel them into the second round.

The Bruins didn’t make it easy on him, peppering the Leafs’ net with 36 shots (compared to 24 at Rask), but once Andersen got over his skittishness in the first period, he was prepared to answer all comers. Both Andersen and Rask were leaky out of the gate, with the former giving up two goals on their first six shots he faced, and the latter allowing two goals on his first five shots faced. From there, though, it was about making the stops that counted, and Andersen did more of that in the second. He halted Bergeron (without his stick) on the Bruins’ second period power play that allowed Kasperi Kapanen to take off for the Leafs’ shorthanded go-ahead goal, and Andersen stiffed DeBrusk on a great chance that would have capped off a nice three-way scoring play by the Bruins in the Leafs’ end. Toronto was getting outshot 26-16 after two periods, but still went to the dressing room with a 4-3 lead because of Andersen.

In the third, however, the Bruins came at the Leafs hard and Andersen didn’t get the same support in front of him that Boston was giving Rask. Even though the Leafs won the possession battle in the third at 56 per cent, they were nervous with the puck in their end and had trouble breaking out cleanly, which kept the pressure on Andersen. While Boston held Toronto without a shot on goal in the game’s final eight minutes, the Leafs didn’t have the same success boxing out in front of Andersen or getting in shooting lanes, which opened up opportunities for the Bruins to capitalize on.

Once again, Andersen gave the Leafs a chance to win, but in their final hour when Toronto needed a timely, heroic save, it didn’t come around. Andersen made a bad read through traffic on Krug's game-tying score and couldn't react quickly enough to DeBrusk's hot shot on the game-winner, helping to drive another nail in Toronto's coffin.

Andersen finished the series with a .896 save-percentage. 

Nightmare night for Gardiner

In the biggest game of the Leafs’ season, nothing seemed to go right for Jake Gardiner. The defenceman finished Game 7 with the game’s worst plus-minus rating at minus-5, and it felt like every play he was involved in became destined to go awry.

Gardiner was committed to the stretch pass in the regular season and was over-committed to it all night in Boston, but those have rarely worked in Toronto’s favour over the course of this series. By the end of the second period, he had attempted at least eight stretch passes, only two of which connected with teammates, and by the end of the game two of his stretch passes had directly resulted in goals for the Bruins.

The worst of the bunch though came late in the third period, when the Leafs were trailing by one goal and Gardiner tossed up a stretch pass on a prayer that ended up getting turned over to Pastrnak for the goal that made it 6-4 that sealed Toronto’s fate. Gardiner was in front of the Leafs’ net when the puck went in, and he curled up briefly on his knees in front of Andersen, clearly lamenting how the sequence had played out. It was just one example of bad decision-making on Gardiner’s part, something that plagued him over the series’ first two games but that he seemed to have under control more in the previous two.

Gardiner’s ability to make game-changing plays to forwards for scoring chances was a hallmark of what was statistically the best regular season of his career. But while the Bruins slowed down the pace of the game and were making safe plays with the puck, Gardiner shied away from the simple and the easy in favour of the game-breaking shot. Ultimately, it did more harm than good for the Leafs. He finished the series with two assists. 

Big-time hustle

Kapanen has a knack for scoring important goals in important moments. There was the overtime winner for Finland to clinch a World Junior Championship, the double-overtime winner in Game 2 last season for the Leafs in their first-round playoff series against Washington, and on Wednesday Kapanen added another major goal to his resume. Midway through the second period, with the game tied at two, Marchand couldn’t hold the line on a Bruins’ power play and Kapanen took off after the loose puck, shouldering his way past Marchand and going in alone on Rask. His countryman had turned aside two previous breakaway chances by Kapanen in this series, but this time the freshman would not be denied, waiting Rask out so he could slide the puck past his left pad and give the Leafs a 4-3 lead. 

It was one part of a solid night overall by the Leafs’ special teams, but with missed chances looming large given the final score. Toronto finished the game 1-for-2 on the power play, clocking in at 4-for-15 overall in the series, while Toronto’s penalty kill stood tall after giving up the early power-play goal to DeBrusk in the first period. The Leafs’ kill finished Game 7 at 2-for-3, and in the series 15-for-22 against the Bruins’ power play.