‘Unflappable’ Maple Leafs stun Lightning with 5-0 rout in Game 1

“Here we go again.” That was the scripted refrain for Toronto Maple Leaf fans when, six minutes and 59 seconds into Game 1 of their first-round series against the Tampa Bay Lightning, checking forward Kyle Clifford inexplicably stared at Ross Colton’s No. 79 for a few seconds and bludgeoned him with a blindside hit from behind.

The call: five minutes for boarding and a game misconduct.

“The Leafs were gonna Leaf,” right? The NHL’s most cursed franchise was supposed to do these things. They blow 4-1 leads in third periods of Game 7s and endure horrific instances of bad luck, such as when their captain John Tavares suffered a terrifying, season-ending head injury minutes into Game 1 of the playoffs last year. When Clifford took the penalty in Game 1 at Scotiabank Arena Monday night, the Leafs should’ve been rattled. The fans should’ve gone morgue-quiet. All the pressure, the five straight first-round playoff exits, should’ve bubbled to the surface.

And then, against the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions, it just…didn’t.

These Leafs, at least for one memorable night, went completely off book. They tenaciously killed the five-minute major and swung the momentum instantly.

They silenced five Lightning power plays with a relentlessly aggressive approach, led by the best postseason game Mitch Marner has ever played in a Leaf uniform. Start to finish, the Leafs delivered a rousing, physical, and, most importantly, confident performance en route to a 5-0 victory. As superstar center Auston Matthews said after the game, the talk on the bench was that the five-minute major was an opportunity to swing the momentum rather than a misfortune. They showed no sign of fear.

“Our team seemed to be unflappable tonight,” said head coach Sheldon Keefe. “The kills that we have early? No problem. The five minute major? No problem. Get our work done, and in fact turned it into a positive with the chances we were able to generate.”

Defenseman Jake Muzzin opened the scoring in the first with a seeing-eye slapshot that Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevsky didn’t seem to see. In the second period, the Leafs’ “power kill” altered the tone again, killing off a penalty and drawing one in the process. After the Bolts took a second penalty in a row, Matthews buried a one-timer on a 5-on-3 to make it 2-0. Three minutes later, with the Leafs shorthanded yet again, the penalty killers took over. Center David Kampf won a foot race for a bouncing puck against all-world defenseman Victor Hedman for a breakaway and beat Vasilevskiy with a wrister. The Leafs flicked the switch to rout mode before the second period was up, with a trailing Marner accepting a slot pass from defenseman Morgan Rielly and waiting out Vasilevskiy to make it 4-0.

As Keefe noted after the game, it was the exact kind of chance Marner couldn’t convert over and over against the Montreal Canadiens last postseason. Marner of all people getting a goal and two assists and ending an 18-game playoff scoring drought was emblematic of Game 1. The Leafs did the opposite of what their star-crossed history suggested they’d do. Even their star forward with the reputation of disappearing in big games showed up like never before.

“I thought he was incredible,” Matthews said of Marner’s Game 1. “He was all over the puck. So much poise.”

The choker version of the Leafs might have throttled down, allowed an early third-period goal and let doubts creep in. That wasn’t the case Monday. After Vasilevskiy miscued a puck behind his own net halfway through the third period, Matthews buried his second of the game. Vasilevskiy spent much of the third listening to the Leafs faithful jeering him. And the Bolts couldn’t even win the intimidation game. After a multi-player skirmish broke out midway through the third, Rielly ended on top of defenseman Jan Rutta, raining punches, sending the Scotiabank Arena decibel level to a stratosphere not witnessed since the pre-pandemic days.

“Our crowd was unbelievable tonight – I thought the crowd was the first star of the game despite that we had a lot of guys that were good,” Keefe said. “I though they carried us through that (five-minute) kill.

“It’s my first game coaching the Leafs with a full building here (in the playoffs). You could feel the love and excitement with this team.”

The Leafs held the Bolts to 24 shots and dominated virtually every facet of Game 1 – well, almost. As Keefe pointed out, with the teams combining for more than 100 minutes in penalties, there was so little 5-on-5 play that it was tough to evaluate that aspect.

But the Lightning are back to back champs for a reason. The Leafs can expect a major counter punch in Game 2. And they won’t get away with giving Tampa five power plays and taking a five-minute major again. You can only gamble at the casino so many times before the house wins, and the officials Monday were calling the rulebook to a tee, like it was a regular season game in October. If that trend continues, the Leafs will have to buckle down going forward. They may even have to do so without Clifford, who could receive supplemental discipline from the NHL Department of Player safety for his hit on Colton, who was able to finish the game.

Still, for anyone equating the Leafs to franchises like the pre-2016 Chicago Cubs, Game 1 brought some encouraging and shockingly rare omens. Marner scored. Steven Stamkos missed an open-net one timer. The reigning Conn Smythe Trophy winner Vasilevskiy surrendered five goals. Nothing played out the way it was supposed to.

Does that mean the Leafs are about to write a completely original script for this 2022 playoff run? It’s far too early to know. But they won just their second Game 1 in six tries during the Matthews/Marner era. They couldn’t have hoped for a better start.

“They’re a real good team there, they’re not going to be thrilled about Game 1,” said Leafs goaltender Jack Campbell, fresh off his second career playoff shutout. “But that’s what it is: it’s Game 1 of the series. We really like the way that we played, but we’ve got to refocus here.”

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‘Unflappable’ Maple Leafs stun Lightning with 5-0 rout in Game 1

ARTICLE SPONSORED BY DAILY FACEOFF BRACKET CHALLENGE

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