Cooper says team gifted Leafs a ‘freebie’

This is not how anyone envisioned this going.

With the Toronto Maple Leafs laying a 5-0 beatdown on the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. With the two-time defending champs leaving the ice in a trail of their own blood.

A freebie is what Lightning head coach Jon Cooper called the opening-round loss.

There are other adjectives that come to mind.

This was a blowout. A game that was as one-sided as you can get. For the Leafs, who came into the series with plenty of question marks and even more things to prove, it was a powerful statement.

For the Lightning, it was simply embarrassing. And uncharacteristic of a team that had spent the past two years winning back-to-back Cups. While these two teams have lately taken turns landing haymakers on one another — Toronto beat Tampa Bay 6-2 in the first week of April; a couple of weeks later, Tampa Bay returned the favour 8-1 — the playoffs are supposed to be a different animal.

But only one team showed up on Monday night. And it wasn’t the Lightning and their collection of stars, who were shut out for the first time since the 2018 semifinal.

“I’m not so sure the Maple Leafs had to play very well to beat us tonight,” said Cooper. “You’ve got to win four but you don’t want to give teams any freebies.”

Give the Leafs credit. It’s not every day when a team as good as Tampa Bay gets frustrated like this in the playoffs. You probably have to go back three years ago to when they were swept in the first round by Columbus.

In some ways, this one cut worse.

This was in front of all of Canada, with ESPN and TNT both broadcasting to the U.S. This had been billed a marquee, must-watch event. And it didn’t disappoint.

There were highlight-reel plays. Plenty of big saves and even bigger hits. There was even a line brawl, with Morgan Rielly first losing a fight to Patrick Maroon, before grabbing Jan Ruutta and splitting his head open with a flurry of punches.

“It’s playoff hockey,” Stamkos of the fights.

By the end of the night, Toronto’s Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner had combined for three goals and six points. Tampa Bay’s dangerous duo of Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov, who each had two shots on net, were a combined minus-3.