Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Joseph Woll bumps Bruins forward David Pastrnak during the third period in Boston on Tuesday. Woll made 27 saves and the Leafs stayed alive with a 2-1 win.Charles Krupa/The Associated Press
As you’re doing the long walk from the terminal to the parking garage at Logan Airport, they run a looped Boston hype reel on the PA.
It goes through a laundry list of cultural firsts they have in this city. It ends with “… and the world’s greatest sports teams.”
Like that’s a proven fact or something.
So there is some honour in denying this town something it thinks it’s already earned.
Showing unusual graft, as well as the unwillingness to crumble given half a chance, the Leafs arm-wrestled the Bruins to a 2-1 overtime win on Tuesday. They now trail the series 3-2.
“Gosh, you black out a little,” said Matthew Knies, scorer of the game winner, on what he’d felt. “I think what brought me more joy was to see the faces of my teammates.”
For one night at least, it was good to be a Maple Leaf. Not that you’d know it from the tone in the dressing room. The usual hushed tones, blank stares and rock-solid clichés.
Maybe they’re back in it or maybe it’s a chance to lose at home on Thursday, but it does mean this will not be a total surrender. Maybe it can be even more painful than that. With this team you expect to be surprised, if not always delighted.
Its goal now is extending the wait.
Without Auston Matthews, starting a back-up goalie and playing in front of the most hostile peacetime crowd in the Western Hemisphere, the Leafs came out buzzing.
The lethargy that had afflicted them in two home games was shaken off. It was hard to say for sure since we see it so rarely, but this may be what the Leafs look like when they care.
Five minutes in, the crowd had been largely neutralized.
The 2024 NHL playoffs bracket: Team matchups
Six minutes in, Toronto had the lead. The unlikely scorer – Jake McCabe – pointed to an alternate means to generate some offence.
Ten minutes in, it looked like the tide had turned. That first half period will be the Leafs’ template from this point. Harry the Bruins. Do not sit still or they will pick you apart. Easy to say and very hard to do, but Toronto showed it is capable of it.
A good night turned hard when Boston’s fourth line scored a fluky one to tie it at 1-1. The puck caromed off a Bruins skate in the corner and landed right in front of the Toronto net. At that point, everything reset and the game took on a do-over feel.
The Leafs’ problems have been given a good going over by this point. First of all, there’s everything. Once it’s the playoffs, Toronto does just about everything wrong.
Since everything is hard to get your arms around in a two-minute hit, commentators have focused on the power play. The Leafs don’t enter the zone with purpose. They don’t set up with any confidence. Most of all, they don’t score. Only one power-play goal in the series coming into Game 5.
Early on, the same problem. Toronto had the only man-advantage of the first period. Boston spent most of it flipping pucks out of the zone.
In the second, the real difference maker took over. With apologies to Brad Marchand, Jeremy Swayman has been the most valuable player over all.
In the midst of another Leafs power play – a good one, this time – Swayman absolutely robbed a pinching Morgan Rielly.
The Boston goalie’s confidence spread contagiously to his team and the audience. From the middle of the second, the Bruins’ push began.
At the other end of the ice, Joseph Woll was doing his best to return the ball. Woll came in late in Game 3, not because Ilya Samsonov was particularly bad, but just in order to change the temperature.
He wasn’t asked to perform miracles. By the end of the second, the Leafs had twice as many shots on goal as the Bruins. And the Bruins shots tended to be wide-open affairs. But Woll didn’t screw anything up – a real plus from anyone in a Toronto sweater.
By the end of the second, the rage was also spreading. Instead of taking it out on each other on the bench, the Leafs decided to try aiming some at the Bruins.
One fractious goalmouth encounter in the Boston crease led to a slo-mo replay game of ‘Find the puck’. It disappeared underneath Swayman as he slid backward into the net. A lot of whacking at it led to handbags all around. It even seemed for a moment that Marchand would fight Mitch Marner. At least, he tried, but Marner wisely refused.
Early in the third, Marchand missed an open net by lacrosse-shovelling the puck up and over it. He doesn’t miss many of those, and never against the Leafs. That felt like a portent.
In the late going, Woll was steely and the rest of the team hung on.
It was stretched into overtime. The winner was scored by Knies – his second goal of the series.
The series now moves back to Toronto for a game on Thursday. The hope will be that a letdown at home will get the Bruins thinking about their recent first-round collapse.
“This team gave up a 3-1 lead last year [against Florida],” said Ryan Reaves. “You know it’s possible.”
Do we?
I guess that’s what people in Reaves’s position say. The Leafs have proven in the past that making plans is not good for their anxiety levels. They’re more of let’s-just-try-to-survive-the-next-24-hours kind of guys.
It is even harder to imagine putting together a three-game win streak minus Matthews. Whatever’s wrong with him, the idea that it’s some sort of minor ailment is getting harder to credit with each passing day.
For right now, the Leafs can make a small adjustment to their targeting apparatus. Don’t worry about winning anything. Worry about how badly you would like to lose, and go from there.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled the name of Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Joseph Woll. This version has been updated.