Boston Bruins center Karson Kuhlman slides through the crease after a save on his shot by Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Frederik Andersen (31) during the third period of Game 1 of an NHL hockey first-round playoff series on April 11, 2019, in Boston.The Associated Press
Maybe you really can simply throw a switch and flip into playoff mode.
There is still much evidence against it, but the Toronto Maple Leafs are at the very least the exception that proves the rule. The proof, for them, came in their best team effort in months.
The Maple Leafs took Game 1 of their first-round NHL playoff series against the Boston Bruins because for the first time in a long time there were, as they like to say in hockey, no passengers. Everyone on board contributed at least something in slowing down the Bruins and their big line of Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak, not to mention the defensive pair of Zdeno Chara and Charlie McAvoy.
“I think, in terms of five-on-five, we did a good job, but whenever you play a line like that it’s a group effort, it’s never just one or two guys that deal with that responsibility,” Leafs defenceman Morgan Rielly, who led the team in ice time with 24 minutes 34 seconds, said Friday. “It’s a team effort, and I think Game 1 was good. We’ll have to build off that moving forward.”
Frederik Andersen went back to being the goaltender he was last fall when talk had him among the top three or four keepers in the NHL. Nikita Zaitsev, whose only appearance in discussions about the Leafs involved wishes for him to be traded somewhere, teamed up with Jake Muzzin, acquired from the Los Angeles Kings in January to provide some grit in the defensive zone, to work with the John Tavares line in successfully defending the Bergeron line.
Tavares, Mitch Marner and Zach Hyman provided lots of offence in addition to their shutdown work. Auston Matthews may have had a relatively quiet night, but he and his linemates gave Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask a few scares. Third-line centre Nazem Kadri teamed up with right winger William Nylander for a highlight-reel goal that gave the Leafs the cushion they needed to play hockey’s version of keepaway in the third period.
And the fourth line, generally an afterthought among the Leafs’ runners and gunners, made its presence felt. Literally, in the case of left winger Trevor Moore. The 24-year-old rookie made his NHL playoff debut a memorable one by blasting Chara, still a force of nature at 42, into the boards.
“He’s the guy that I have tremendous respect for and a guy who I watched growing up,” Moore said the day after flattening Chara. “It’s surreal to be on the same ice as him. You can see he’s still a good player and a guy we need to be physical on and try and shut down and be hard on.”
There is no way Moore will forget his big hit. He said his family back in California sent him a memento of it that was making its way around social media. “My cousin sent me a video of it this morning. They had a good time with it,” he said.
Going into the playoffs, there was no indication the Leafs could pull an effort like that one out of their hats. For the last few months of the season, they were an increasingly erratic group of freelancers who thought a solo rush was the best way to make up for defensive brain cramps.
But come Thursday night, the Leafs employed their speed game in the best possible way to counter the Bruins’ grinding style. They did not run around the ice blindly, but waited for their chances. They played a more physical game than they usually do, but not to the extent they were chasing the Bruins in the hopes of landing a hit. Most important of all, the Leafs knew when to hold back from chasing the puck, regroup in the neutral zone and take away the room the Bruins needed to work their transition game.
When the opportunities were there, the Leafs dumped the puck past the Bruins’ defence and beat them to it around the end boards to start the cycle game. More than a few replays showed Chara (who had a particularly tough night at the office) well behind a Leafs forward in a race for the puck.
What matters now is repeating the effort in Game 2 on Saturday night at TD Garden. But the 4-1 win has the Leafs all singing from the same hymnal.
“It’s a five-man job,” Muzzin said of defending the Bergeron line. “And Fred [Andersen] was there when we needed him. You need to play them hard, limit their time and space, like you have to against most top lines in the league.
“I thought we did a good job tracking them. I didn’t find there were a lot of rush chances from them. The best way to stop those is to keep the puck and play in their zone. To defend a line like that, that’s the easy way to do it if we can.”
The one adjustment Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy is expected to make will be to use his home advantage of the last change to move Bergeron’s line away from the Tavares group as much as he can. That means Matthews and his linemates will have to handle the job, which head coach Mike Babcock says they are prepared to do thanks to some work late in the regular season against one of the best two-way centres in the NHL.
“The bottom line is we set Auston’s line against [Aleksander] Barkov when Florida came in,” Babcock said. “We did that down the stretch to prepare for these opportunities.”