SIMMONS: Maple Leafs lose in overtime, a game they should have won
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The puck was on William Nylander’s stick in overtime on Friday night. The Leafs’ leading playoff scorer. An almost breakaway. A comfortable place he has found himself in before.
But nothing happened.
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SIMMONS: Maple Leafs lose in overtime, a game they should have won Back to video
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The puck was on Matthew Knies’ stick in overtime. In the kind of comfortable position we’ve seen before. Knies has scored twice in the Stanley Cup playoffs by bearing down on loose puck chases.
Just not on Friday night.
There was no Nylander breakaway goal to end the storybook Game 3 between the Maple Leafs and the Stanley Cup-champion Florida Panthers on Friday night, no Knies semi-breakaway goal to end it, either.
Instead, it was the usual. The overtime goal that comes from nowhere and defies explanation. Except it didn’t come from no one. It came from Brad Marchand, the rat playing in the hockey land of the rats. It wasn’t anything special. Only the guy who scored it was.
Most overtime goals are not necessarily special.
This time, the puck bounced off Morgan Reilly, off one part of his body, which hit another part of his body, then landed somehow behind Joseph Woll in goal for the Leafs. That’s how Game 3 at Amerant Arena ended. Not with anything to remember, but certainly with something to forget.
Marchand’s goal came at 15:27 of the first overtime period, just about eight minutes after Nylander broke in alone and was stopped by Sergei Bobrovsky.
The Knies backhand came less than two minutes before Marchand ended the game and changed the narrative of this Atlantic Division playoff series for now.
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It was so close to being 3-0 for the Maple Leafs in the series. It was so damn close. Now it’s two-freakin’-one, instead of three-freakin’-0. And it’s back to hold-your-breath time for Leafs fans who understand the concept after so much practice.
This is what happens at playoff time. A first-period win looks like a second-period loss, looks like a third period tie. All in one playoff game on a Friday night.
The Leafs lost, had to be semi-heartbroken after the overtime shocker, after what almost was, but they know realistically that they have to come back and do this again here on Sunday night. This is when Craig Berube is usually at his best as a coach. He brings perspective to heartbreak. He brings process instead of emotion. He knows what the Leafs need to do to defeat the Panthers.
Now it’s a question of doing it. With no shortage of questions to ask after Game 3.
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Woll started the game in net for the Leafs. He looks to be the goaltender for at least the next few games, if not the rest of the series. That comes with some built-in doubts, the biggest one coming from the way in which the Panthers dump the puck in.
That’s their game. Hard on the forecheck. Take a body or two on every dump-in. Wear down the Leafs. With Anthony Stolarz in goal, the Leafs had a strong puck moving goaltender. Without him, every dump-in is a little more dangerous, a little more difficult and puts the defence at some kind of risk.
This is Paul Maurice hockey at its best. Dump. Chase. Hit. Wear down. Do it again. And then start all over again. Woll is not comfortable playing the puck. The Leafs defence, as strong as it may be as a group, doesn’t like playing the part of pinata.
That’s not going to change if Stolarz isn’t able to play. That’s something, like the forecheck, that the Leafs are going to have to tough their way through. But this team is capable of that: Unless by Game 5, or 6 or 7 they just get worn down.
The Leafs have scored 13 goals in three games against Bobrovsky. That’s a lot of goal-scoring for three playoff games. That’s a lot of goal scoring for a Leafs team that has historically struggled with goals in the post-season.
Captain Auston Matthews has none of those 13 goals. Nylander has three. Knies, Rielly and John Tavares each have two. Mitch Marner, Max Domi, Chris Tanev and Max Pacioretty have the others.
Matthews had more hits in Game 3 than he had shots on goal. He didn’t play terribly, he just didn’t do what he’s paid to do: Take over playoff games when they’re this close. That’s why the Leafs made him hockey’s highest-paid player. That’s why they look to him to score when no one else is scoring.
But here, the first-liners are all scoring. Knies and Marner are his linemates. They’ve got goals. Nylander, Tavares and sometimes Pacioretty are the second line. They’ve got goals.
Why not Matthews?
He did make an incredible play that won’t get him any points. While killing a penalty in the final minute, he reached out, dove across the ice, and somehow cleared a loose puck that didn’t seem possible.
He made the play that few others could have made. But he also scores goals the way few others can score and through three games he has none. In the Leafs’ past 19 playoff games, eight of them against the Panthers, Matthews has only three goals.
Not even a deflection off a deflection off a deflection kind of goal.
Rielly scored the game tying goal in the third period, a shot that deflected off Seth Jones and past Bobrovsky. That sent the game to overtime.
The opportunity was there to tilt the series exponentially on Friday night. Now we don’t know, can’t know, what happens next. The Leafs have scored 13 goals in three games. Florida has scored 12 goals. The series is that close.
The kind of series an elite goal-scorer can influence, or change, with one shot.
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