BRUINS TIE IT UP
Mistakes prove costly for Leafs as they fall 6-4 to Boston in Game 4. Coverage begins on
By the time the Leafs played Game 4, the kings had been dead for nearly 24 hours — not the Kings, the kings — and the shock was still echoing around hockey. The Tampa Bay Lightning won 62 regular-season games, sat atop the toughest division in hockey by 50 miles, and left Boston and Toronto squabbling in their dust for the right to play them. And the Lightning got swept out of the playoffs in seven furious, stunning days.
So the Leafs had a chance Wednesday night to get to within one game of the second round, and Columbus. As winger Zach Hyman said before Game 4, “The door’s open, I guess.”
It’s not closed yet, but it’s not as open, either. And despite Toronto’s 6-4 loss Wednesday, you can see how the Leafs could win this series. They have exerted more pressure in three of the four games. At 5-on-5, they’ve been the better team in every game where the referees didn’t put their whistles in a security deposit box for safekeeping. They have better depth, and the better goalie. And their big guns can shoot.
And of course, you can see how the Leafs could lose this series, too. Boston’s best guys are champions. Toronto’s penalty kill is getting strafed for the third straight year in the postseason. There are mistakes, at the wrong time. When you’re down to a best-of-three, anything can be the goof-up that gets you.
“We did a lot of good things tonight, generated a lot of chances, got a lot of pucks to the net,” centre John Tavares said. “We just made too many mistakes at certain points of the game.”
Yep. Boston broke up its mammoth top line after Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak had been outplayed by Tavares, Mitch Marner and Zach Hyman in two of the first three games.
And Pastrnak and Marchand got three goals anyway. Toronto took two penalties on another night of tighter refereeing — Sportsnet’s Brian Burke said the league had ordered tighter calls after Game 2 — and Boston’s two power-play goals were easy as pie.
“They have really good players, let’s not kid ourselves,” Leafs coach Mike Babcock said. “Those two goals tonight, we covered it this morning and we didn’t look after it. We have to fix it. You can’t give those power-play goals up. Those were freebies, those two. Not that didn’t make plays or anything like that, but we weren’t in spots we were supposed to be in.”
The Leafs were 18th in penalty killing this year after being 11th and 10th the previous two years, and have allowed 11 power-play goals in the past 17 post-season games, which isn’t great for a team that doesn’t take a lot of penalties. That one is on Babcock to fix.
Add a Jake Muzzin pinch letting Pastrnak get loose on a rush, and a Nikita Zaitsev shot-block recovery leading to Marchand sneaking into the crease, and a Zdeno Chara shot that floated past Frederik Andersen, and Toronto was down 5-2 in the third.
But the Leafs are the more dangerous team in this series, and at 5-on-5, they had periods of absolute dominance. William Nylander’s line was a load. Auston Matthews scored twice. There were chances. Suddenly, Toronto was cycling the puck against the Bruins, over and over. It was like finding out someone you knew could juggle, you know, if they wanted. When Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said of his fourth line, “They need to have more O-zone puck possession, or they’re in trouble,” he could have been speaking of his second and third lines, too.
So the Leafs got a third-period goal from Matthews and another from Travis Dermott before allowing an emptynetter to end it. They played some terrific hockey between mistakes on Wednesday night.
“We’ve seen Toronto play a tighter defensive game, and we didn’t see that as much during the season, little bit more committed to that,” Cassidy said beforehand. “I don’t doubt either team will have great effort … it’s always effort and execution, that’s what separates them. Both teams will bring terrific effort, who executes better? There’s always adjustments, yes, and I think the line matchups get talked about: Jeez, Bergeron versus Tavares, these are two allworld players.
“And whoever executes better, whatever line, Marner, Pastrnak, go down the list, (David) Krejci vs. Matthews, Rask vs. (Frederik) Andersen: It’s a little bit about execution, who outplays the guy across from him, that’s what I see.”
The path is still there to imagine, but Boston isn’t going easy. This Toronto team knows it can win this series, knows it can expose Boston’s lack of speed. This series is a coin flip, and whoever escapes shouldn’t be scared of any team between here and a Stanley Cup final. Now that the Lightning are gone, there is a little more room to imagine what could happen.
“We have confidence but it’s 2-2, it’s tied,” Toronto defenceman Morgan Rielly said. “They have confidence, too.”
That’s about right. The Leafs have been the better team in this series most of the time. It remains to be seen whether that will be enough.