Toronto Maple Leafs centre Auston Matthews celebrates the team's Game 3 Stanley Cup playoff series win over Boston with goaltender Frederik Andersen in Toronto on Monday, April 16, 2018.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
There was certainly an element of luck involved when the Toronto Maple Leafs pulled themselves back from the brink against the Boston Bruins.
This time, though, mistakes such as fat passes across the middle in their own end did not turn into Boston goals on Monday night. Also, a borderline penalty call went the Leafs’ way for the early lead on a power-play goal.
But the biggest part of getting themselves back in the NHL playoff series, which the Bruins still lead 2-1, was getting their confidence back. The most striking thing about the Leafs after getting blown out by the Bruins twice was the shell-shocked air about them. There was no trace of the usual swagger from the players who fancy themselves the leading young guns of the NHL.
Leafs head coach Mike Babcock is often at his most honest 24 hours after the fact. He admitted Tuesday during a media conference call, with both the Leafs and Bruins players taking the day off, he was afraid the magnitude of the first two losses was too much for his team to handle.
“Depending on how you’re playing, I think some series get out of hand,” Babcock said. “It’s out of hand, there’s nothing you could do. I thought [Monday] night for us – I mean, if we didn’t have success [Monday] night, I thought we were probably going to be done.
“But, I think this now gets us back to playing. So, to me, we have a game at home, that’s all that really matters and that’s what I talked about [Monday]. I’m a big believer in the National Hockey League, you win today and everything’s okay. That’s the same approach you take into tomorrow. You win tomorrow, you’re in a best-of-three and I think we’re set up real good that way.”
This does not mean the Leafs have the Bruins down on the mat. They were still dangerous through to the final minute of Monday’s 4-2 Leafs win and the Leafs desperately need to win Game 3 Thursday. Pulling even in the series is vital in order to keep that shot of confidence alive.
That is why, Babcock thinks, the Leafs were fortunate to have a two-day break in the series. Now they could take a day off on Tuesday feeling good about themselves before getting back to practice on Wednesday. It makes the rest more meaningful because they did not spend the day fretting about their situation.
“Plus, we’re pumped to have the day [off] and then we’ll have a real good practice pace and we can get the tempo of our game,” Babcock said. “Ideally, our confidence will get back and we can play the way we’ve played all year.
“People would find it hard to believe, it’s easy to lose your confidence very quickly at playoff time, but I think we’re in a great spot to get it back. I really felt it helped Freddie [Andersen] last night. It helped Auston [Matthews] last night. A lot of our guys will be feeling better about themselves, which is positive.”
Andersen and Matthews were among a long list of Leafs who were much better in Monday’s win than they were in the first two games. The list included almost all of their best players – William Nylander, Mitch Marner, Patrick Marleau and, notably, their best defenceman, Morgan Rielly.
As the game went on, there were two indicators the Leafs had their mojo working again. The first was their skating. For the first time in the series, the Leafs were using their speed to open spots in the offensive zone and get the Bruins chasing them.
The other was the appearance of the stretch pass, a Leafs trademark over the past two seasons. The first notable one was connected late in the first period, to Kasperi Kapanen for a partial breakaway. But his puck luck in this series continued and he lost control of it at the Bruins’ net.
However, the Leafs persisted and early in the second period, a bomb from Rielly found Marner, who set up Marleau for his first goal. Later in the period, shortly before Matthews scored his first goal of the series, another stretch pass sent Kapanen off on a rush and again his luck held – he hit the post for the second time in two games.
Bad luck aside, the Leafs were making the Bruins nervous for the first time. The only downside was too often the Leafs defencemen could not resist making that long pass horizontally across their zone, and not vertically. Those often wound up on Boston sticks, but the Leafs’ good luck also held and not much came of them.
“Well, I just think that any time you can transition from defence to offence fast, you have a better chance to have success, for sure,” Babcock said of the stretch passes. “In saying that, the Bruins have done a pretty good job against us and we haven’t had as much success at that as we normally have.
“The other thing about it is, the harder you come back and defend quickly, the better chance you have to have success in that transition. We have to do a better job in that area if we’re going to continue to have success.”