SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Auston Matthews hadn’t scored towards Florida in additional than a yr. He ended the drought — and may need saved Toronto’s season within the course of.
Matthews acquired his first purpose of the sequence to interrupt a scoreless tie within the third interval, Joseph Woll stopped 22 photographs and the Toronto Maple Leafs saved their season alive by beating the Florida Panthers 2-0 in Recreation 6 of the Jap Convention semifinal sequence Friday evening.
“Only a gutsy, gutsy win,” Matthews mentioned.
Recreation 7 is Sunday evening in Toronto. The winner will face Carolina within the East closing.
“We performed a easy recreation tonight,” Leafs coach Craig Berube mentioned.
Easy, however efficient. Toronto blocked 31 photographs, plus killed off all 4 Florida energy performs.
Max Pacioretty added an insurance coverage purpose for the Maple Leafs, who improved to 4-2 when dealing with elimination for the reason that begin of the 2023 playoffs.
Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 15 photographs for the Panthers, the defending Stanley Cup champions who oddly are solely 8-7 in potential closeout video games over the past three postseasons.
“You win otherwise you study,” Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov mentioned. “Tonight, we realized.”
Florida coach Paul Maurice is 5-0 in Recreation 7s, together with the ultimate recreation of final season’s Stanley Cup Closing. The Panthers are 3-1 all-time within the final recreation of a sequence — 2-0 on the highway — whereas the Maple Leafs have misplaced every of their final six Recreation 7s. Of these, 4 have been towards Boston and now-Panthers ahead Brad Marchand.
“We’re not going to point out any video of these Recreation 7s,” Maurice mentioned. “We’ll take a look at our recreation tonight and see the place we will get higher.”
It was the 68th recreation of this season’s playoffs — and solely the second that was 0-0 after 40 minutes. The opposite was Wednesday evening, when Edmonton wound up eliminating Vegas with a 1-0 victory in time beyond regulation in Recreation 5 of that Western Convention semifinal sequence.
Toronto had 5 targets in Recreation 1, 4 extra in Recreation 2 and had three by the early goings of the second interval of Recreation 3. Add it up, and that was 12 in mainly the primary seven intervals of the sequence.
From there, Toronto had managed mainly nothing — till Matthews broke by way of.
The Toronto captain was 0 for 31 on photographs towards Florida this season, together with the common season. Bobrovsky had stopped 85 of the final 86 shot makes an attempt he had seen within the sequence. And the Maple Leafs hadn’t had the lead in mainly the equal of three 1/2 video games — 216 minutes, 30 seconds, to be exact.
However when a cross acquired away from Florida’s Aaron Ekblad, Matthews had a slight opening — and that was all he wanted. A low shot skittered alongside the ice and beat Bobrovsky for a 1-0 lead with 13:40 left.
“It’s a giant win, from prime to backside,” Matthews mentioned. “We earned that.”
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