Leafs look to shake ghosts of epic 2013 playoff collapse
Mitch Marner had just turned 16 when the Toronto Maple Leafs and Boston Bruins tangled in Game 7 of their 2013 first-round playoff series.
Connor Brown — like Marner, a lifelong Leafs fan — was 19 and on a family vacation when Toronto scored twice early in the third period to grab what looked like an insurmountable 4-1 lead.
“We were in Dublin,” said Brown, now a Leafs forward. “It was four in the morning, we were watching.”
What he saw was Boston roar back with three goals in the final 11 minutes of regulation at TD Garden, before Patrice Bergeron struck again in overtime to send the shell-shocked visitors home in stunned disbelief.
“As a Leaf fan, it was tough,” recalled Marner, who led Toronto in scoring this season.
While the cast of characters has changed on both sides, the ghosts of that epic collapse linger as the Leafs visit the Bruins in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference quarter-final Thursday.
Nazem Kadri, one of just five players remaining on Toronto’s roster from 2013, remembers thinking his 4-1 goal at 5:29 of the third was going to be enough for the Leafs to move on.
“I think a lot of people thought the same thing,” Kadri said.
Instead, the next hour or so mushroomed into the most difficult moment of his career.
“It was hard to deal with,” added Kadri, who enters the first round playoff with the Bruins with 32 goals for the second straight season.
Now a veteran centre, he said there are lessons to be learned from the disaster that saw Toronto become the first team in NHL history to blow a three-goal lead in the third period of a Game 7.
“Nothing’s changed in terms of Boston being a resilient group,” Kadri said. “They’ve got some veteran guys over there that have some serious experience.
“It’s going to take all we’ve got, but we’re up for the challenge.”
Toronto is now led by young forwards like Marner, Auston Matthews, and William Nylander, who got their first taste of playoff hockey at this level last season when the Leafs lost in six games to Washington.
“It’s a grind every moment, not a lot of space out there,” said Marner, who had 22 goals and 47 assists for 69 points this season.
“You’ve just got to stay calm.”
But recognizing the team needed support, the Leafs brought in a pair of veteran free agents over the summer in winger Patrick Marleau and defenceman Rob Hainsey, before adding centre Tomas Plekanec prior to the trade deadline.
The club’s talented bottom-six includes Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk, who were frontline players back in 2013, while Brown, a late-round draft pick in 2012, is among a secondary group that’s blossomed in supporting roles.
Toronto’s defence is a also lot more mobile than it was five years ago, with Morgan Rielly
and Jake Gardiner, another 2013 holdover, driving the play from the back end.
Boston has also seen a lot of change, but the core that eventually pushed on to the Stanley Cup final is largely intact. Bergeron is still a workhorse down the middle, while forwards Brad Marchand and David Krejci, ageless defenceman Zdeno Chara, and goalie Tuukka Rask continue chugging along. They also added Rick Nash at the deadline to a bruising forward group that already included David Backes.
Despite that disappointment, Boston finished with 50 wins and 112 points compared to Toronto’s 49 victories for 105 points. Boston
and Toronto ranked fourth and seventh in the overall standings this season thanks to high-powered offences that averaged well over three goals a night.
Leafs goalie Frederik Andersen, who won a franchise-record 38 games, and Rask, who picked up 34, had near identical save percentages (. 918 to .917).
Toronto won three of four meetings between the teams by a combined 12-10 score line, with one of those victories coming in overtime.
“We’ve got depth, they’ve got depth. It’s a game of inches,” said Matthews, who scored 34 goals this season despite missing 20 games through injury.