Series will be won in blue paint
With goals at a premium, Knies follows recipe for success by making life difficult for Swayman
It’s an age-old recipe that’s fuelled many a playoff run. And certainly it saved the Maple Leafs’ season in Tuesday’s 2-1 overtime win in Boston.
Call it the two essentials of the blue paint.
Essential one: Have a hot goaltender in yours.
Essential two: Make life as difficult as possible for the goaltender in theirs.
It goes without saying the Maple Leafs are crossing their fingers that Joseph Woll’s 28-save masterpiece in Game 5 is a sign he has rediscovered the form that had him established as Toronto’s top netminder before he suffered a December ankle sprain that kept him out most of three months. A dialed-in Woll could be the much-needed antidote to the stellar performance of Boston goaltender Jeremy Swayman, whose .952 save percentage in four appearances leads all playoff goaltenders who’ve started at least two games.
And as for making life difficult for Swayman — well, the lesson of Game 5 is that it might be Toronto’s only chance of creating the requisite offence to keep this series alive. At the risk of nitpicking Toronto’s latest win, which cut Boston’s series lead to 3-2, it wasn’t exactly the offensive explosion the Maple Leafs have long been looking for. It was the 11th time in the past 12 playoff games that Toronto scored two or fewer goals.
Still, the way Toronto scored them was instructive. The winner in overtime wasn’t fancy. It was the product of two Maple Leaf forwards, John Tavares and Matthew Knies, making a beeline to Swayman’s crease. Tavares’s one-handed backhand attempt on goal, redirected into the gaping goalmouth, allowed the big-bodied Knies to bury his first career playoff winner. It’s the kind of dirty-area, quickstrike tally that renders even the best goaltender’s skill level moot. It’s the kind of goal good playoff teams score regularly. It’s the kind of goal that isn’t necessarily the wheelhouse of Toronto’s top regular-season point producers.
Not that goals can’t be scored from anywhere. Defenceman Jake McCabe scored Toronto’s other goal on Tuesday night on a seeingeye shot from the point that found its way into the net. But even that one probably wouldn’t have gone in without the net-front screen set by Tyler Bertuzzi, whose top-of-thecrease position attracted two Boston defenders who added to the visual noise between Swayman and the approaching puck.
In other words: Toronto’s netfront presence, along with Woll’s calm work in the face of Boston’s, proved to be the difference in the game.
It was Knies’s second such goal in the series. In a Game 3 loss Knies finished a similar trip to the far post by lifting a brilliant cross-ice feed from Mitch Marner past Swayman. And such was Knies’s proximity to the crease that he only celebrated the goal after barrelling over Swayman and landing on his rear end in the Boston goalmouth.
After making his NHL debut with the Maple Leafs during last year’s post-season, the 21-year-old Knies has suffered his share of setbacks. A year ago, after the Leafs advanced to the second round for the first time in 19 years, Knies suffered a concussion after he was violently slammed to the ice by Florida’s Sam Bennett. A few shifts into that fateful Game 2, Knies’s post-season was over. And as recently as the regular season’s final month Knies, occasionally struggling to deal with the realities of the 82-game grind in his rookie regular season, found himself demoted to Toronto’s fourth line.
Knies, of course, has also spent large parts of his short career playing alongside Toronto’s best players. His most frequent linemate during the regular season was Auston Matthews, who missed Game 5 with an unspecified ailment and whose status for Game 6 remains in question. In the playoffs, it’s been Tavares. Knies has qualities, mind you, that suggest he can find chemistry with anyone. His six-footthree, 220-pound frame makes him an imposing figure. His post-whistle tête-à-tête with Boston’s David Pastrnak displayed an assured swagger that belies his age.
“I was telling him he’s the strongest guy on the ice,” McCabe said of Knies after Game 5. “He’s 21 years old and he’s an absolute horse out there.”
Perhaps just as important, Knies’s view of his game shows a healthy respect for simplicity.
As Knies said earlier this season: “Every time I’m out there, I want to be dominant physically, take it to the net and have poise with the puck.”
It’s a mentality the offencestarved Maple Leafs could use en masse. At this time of year, there are no secrets. It essentially comes down to a fight for the same ice. As Bruins coach Jim Montgomery told reporters in Boston on Wednesday: “We’ve got to attack inside the dots. And we’ve got to screen the goalie.”
Just because it sounds simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. As head coach Sheldon Keefe has said more than once in the wake of Game 5: Now that the Leafs have captured Boston’s attention, the next win figures to be even harder to come by. It’ll be to the surprise of nobody if the fate of the blue and white is decided, for better or worse, not far from the blue paint.