Give them this much: they put on a hell of a show,
Capitals knock out Leafs as a fifth game goes to overtime
In the sudden-death dressing room of a suddenly dead team, quiet except for the panting from heaving chests, they looked around at each other.
And they smiled, through broken teeth, with swollen cheeks, and maybe some yet concussed noggins. No need for words, not yet. Proud. The Maple Leafs are done for this season, for this electrifying playoff series. But, oh my, such a gallant group of young men.
Memorable for them too, once the ache of a 2-1 Game 6 loss to the mighty Capitols — who got the scare of their postseason life against Toronto — wears off.
“It’s pretty fresh right now,” said Morgan Rielly, a good bet as a future Leaf captain, in the immediate aftermath of the defeat, once the media had invaded the outer sanctum. Too soon, really, for reflection and perspective.
“It’s a strange feeling. On one side you can take pride in the way that we battled and the way we competed. But on the other side it sucks to lose. And that’s the reality. It’s a good team over there. But right now it’s just a matter of taking everything in, just being around one another. “That’s life.” One goal less. One game more. Every game in this series was decided by one goal. As was the series itself. In overtime, for the fifth time. Their goal: Marcus Johansson, just tucking a puck under Freddie Anderson, 6:31 into OT.
Johansson 2, Toronto 1. He had tied it too, with fewer than eight minutes left in regulation.
The Capitals, with that victory, rid themselves of the valiant Maple Leafs, in a six-pack of absolutely delightful hockey.
Give them that much — both teams. For putting on a hell of a show, even if just in the post-season aperitif round.
The Leafs will push back their chairs from the table now, the grown-ups’ table. Kids no more and we’ll probably miss that about them in years ahead.
If only time could have stopped at 7:45 of the third period, a moment of symbiotic sweetness.
In the corner boards, a “Go-Nuts!’’ sign, advertising for a certain brand of peanuts.
Just above it, a steel strut glass separator.
And that’s where an apparently innocent dump-in from Rielly caromed, boing out in front of the Washington net.
And who should be standing there, slickly sneaking behind a defence that had split wide, in anticipation of how the puck was likely to behave off a ho-hum deposit that had possession turnover written all over it? You know. Of course you do. Auston Matthews, the rookie sensation who has been there time and time again for Toronto this season, as he if he plays in a state of Leaf grace. He saw the whites of Braden Holtby’s eyes and beat him over the shoulder. And Go-Nuts! went the crowd. “Just a pretty fortunate bounce, just popped right there,” Matthews said.
“It was kind of bobbling a little bit. I was just trying to make a play to get it on net. I was pretty fortunate it went in.”
But Matthews, this wondrous 20-year-old lottery draft gift to Toronto, didn’t much feel like reviewing his final goal of 2016-2017. By then, in that jammed locker room, it was about something else.
“When you look around the hockey room after the game, just sitting in here, I think we gave it our all. We left it all on the ice. Every one of us is proud of each other.
“We had unbelievable support from Leaf Nation. I think for us, the future is definite bright.”
Matthews’ fourth goal of the playoffs almost stood up. Until a turnover in the neutral zone, a sloppy bit of confusion by the Leafs defence, and a homely little wimp of a shot from Johansson that dribbled ever so slowly under Freddie Andersen. After he had coolly contended with everything the Capitals could throw at him, the most jaw-dropping a spearing glove save on T.J. Oshie in the slot just before Johansson tied it 1-1.
It was for Andersen that his teammates felt saddest.
“I thought our goalie was probably the best I’ve ever seen him,” Rielly said.
Mitch Marner had stated, earlier in the day: “From the start we said, ‘Why not us?’ ” Oh, the precociousness of youth. Nazem Kadri, shrugging off rahrah speechifying from the coach as if it were superfluous: “We don’t need much convincing.”
And Matthews, a dead-pan dear when a media mook asked how differently he mentally prepared for a Game 7: “It’s Game 6.”
Okay, at sixes and sevens on an April Sunday night at the Air Canada Centre, and you can’t get to the latter in this first round of the playoffs without nailing a win for the former.
Against a team, in the Capitals, that had finished 26 points ahead of Toronto in the regular season.
It was the first-ever post-season match-up between Washington and Toronto. One can only hope for plenty more. Although none will ever again be quite like this. “They’re a good team,” said Rielly. “They’ve been doing this a lot longer than we have. So credit to them.”
If there was an apprehensive edge in the encounter to start — surely more on for the home side except the Caps wanted this done and gone — it didn’t reveal itself in an up-anddown quick transition first period, with whistles few and far between, while the puck itself seemed bouncy-bouncy.
Mitch Marner, whose playoffsturdiness had been (unfairly) questioned in some quarters, was a whirling dervish, throwing his 170pound body with abandon and buzzing into the Washington zone. Zach Hyman was like a jackhammer behind the Capitals net, using feet and body to protect the puck, harangued this way and that, yet teeing up the best scoring opportunity Toronto had in the opening 20 minutes.
At the other end, Andersen was bowled over in his crease by Johansson and the mutual message was clear: No prisoners would be taken. After the first scoreless first period of the series, the prospect of another overtime loomed large.
The intensity ratcheted up further in the second period, as the Leafs took a firmer grasp of the game — everywhere but on the scoreboard, frustratingly. The third period was an emotional roller coaster and in overtime Washington asserted its playoff pedigree.
There was were deafening FreddieFreddie chants, in utter gratitude, when Andersen stoned Justin Williams, stoned Alex Ovechkin, stoned T.J. Oshie, stoned Evgeny Kuznetsov.
Really, as nada-nada and then 1-1 hockey goes, this was a hummer. And then, too soon, it was all over: Handshakes and head-shakes, for what might have been.
Marner had said: “You can hear the roar in the city.”
As they left the ice, the besotted crowd honored them with one final Go Leafs Go!