Are the Toronto Maple Leafs finally built to win ugly in the Stanley Cup playoffs?

Credit: © Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Brayden Point stood up for a few anguished strides and fell back down, writhing. Morgan Rielly lay prone as Nikita Kucherov buried a stick in his back. Steven Stamkos and Auston Matthews waltzed for a few bars before crashing to the ice. Tanner Jeannot hurled obscenities at Luke Schenn, thirsting for violence.

Mark 5:04 of the third period in Game 3, Saturday night at Amalie Arena, as the moment of detonation between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning.

The intensity was already percolating. The series arrived lugging the baggage of recent history between two teams who went seven games last year. Game 1 included Michael Bunting’s nasty check to the head of Erik Cernak and ensuing suspension, not to mention Jake McCabe taking out Mikey Eyssimont with a thunderous hit. Jeannot bloodied Schenn during a heavyweight tilt in Game 2, which also included Mark Giordano and Zach Bogosian throwing down.

But this rivalry went nuclear in the third period of Game 3 Saturday when Rielly drilled Point into the boards in Toronto’s zone. Rielly was initially assessed a five-minute major for boarding, but it was correctly negated upon a review. Point simply lost the puck battle with Rielly, who hit him clean on the shoulder.

Still, it was an heavy collision that drew the Lightning’s fury. It’s clear now: hate is real in this series.

Looking at how Leafs GM Kyle Dubas behaved at the 2023 Trade Deadline, it feels like everything was building toward a night like Saturday, wasn’t it?

Seemingly fed up with his team’s streak of first-round playoff exists and the reputation that teams can push around the Leafs’ stars, Dubas eschewed the spreadsheet-friendly team construction to collect blunt instruments, acquiring Schenn, McCabe, Noel Acciari and Sam Lafferty, not to mention upping the grit and experience factor with Ryan O’Reilly. It was as if Toronto was reconstructing its roster specifically to go to war with the Lightning, who are the NHL’s biggest, heaviest team and also among the toughest, sitting near the top of the league in penalties, major penalties and hits in the regular season. And why not prepare for them? The two teams were locked into their matchup months in advance.

The question was whether building your team to get ugly and muddy would actually work against a team like the Lightning, who can go to war with pretty much anyone and have the team skill to put goals on the board, too. After the bloodbath midway through the third period of Game 3, it wasn’t looking like Toronto was ready for the grind. It’s hard to out-Lightning the Lightning. The Leafs dared punch first with the Rielly hit and in doing so, they kicked a hornet’s nest. The wily Lightning sent several of the Leafs’ top skill players to the penalty box in the melee, which wasn’t ideal for a team trying to tie the game. Tampa’s heavies, from Jeannot to Patrick Maroon to Nick Paul, unloaded on the Leafs with hit after hit, applying heavy pressure while also protecting a 3-2 lead.

But then something strange happened: the Leafs absorbed the hit parade. They played like survivors. And that was also after an atrocious second period in which they allowed eighteen 5-on-5 scoring chances and escaped with a single goal allowed. And who was it, on the doorstep, taking a hit and chipping home the tying goal with a minute to go and the net empty in the third period? O’Reilly, the 2018-19 Conn Smythe Trophy winner, the player specifically brought in to lift the Leafs during moments in which they typically wilt. He added a key shot block at the end of regulation to boot.

And there was O’Reilly again, winning a faceoff 19-plus minutes into overtime, setting up Rielly’s winning goal. As linemate Acciari summarized O’Reilly to reporters Saturday: “This is his time.”

“Playing against him and now playing with him, you can tell that he really likes those moments and those challenges,” Reilly told reporters. “He seems to really enjoy them. He’s not fazed by the pressure or anything like that and when we’re down late in games.”

The Leafs have so often been the team that controls a game but doesn’t have that push to get the big goal. It was a role reversal on Saturday, with the Bolts in total control of the overtime period before the Leafs mustered that one perfectly timed counterpunch.

The question now is: are we seeing a turning of the tide, in which the Leafs are finding a way to handle themselves in situations where they’d normally be bullied out of the building?

Maybe. The Leafs did not shrink under intimidating circumstances Saturday night. They actually outhit the Lightning 62-61. The moment when Schenn stoically weathered verbal threats from Jeannot and the entire Lightning bench, standing in front of his Leafs teammates like a nightclub bouncer, was emblematic of the identity shift. But as romantic as that narrative might sound, we have to get one thing clear: the Leafs were not the better team Saturday. The Lightning skated circles around them. The shot attempts at 5-on-5 were 81-42 Tampa, the scoring chances 45-25. The Leafs held on for dear life.

The glass-half-full perspective, however, would say that’s what made Game 3 special. It was precisely the type of game that hasn’t tended to go Toronto’s way in the postseason.

“You look over the years, we’ve lost (these kinds) of games,” Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe told reporters after Game 3. “We pulled it out, because we stayed with it. We certainly bent, we didn’t break. Credit to our guys – Tampa gave us everything they had.”

Somehow, despite a wobbly first couple periods, goaltender Ilya Samsonov made the types of game-saving stops that Jack Campbell could not last season. And O’Reilly came through when it looked like the Leafs had nothing cooking in overtime.

Either the Leafs got a lucky goal at the right moment, or they’re a changed team, built to win the greasy ones. If Dubas’ tinkering has finally achieved the latter, there’s no telling what the rest of the series can bring.

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Are the Toronto Maple Leafs finally built to win ugly in the Stanley Cup playoffs?

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