TORONTO — It took just 12 minutes of the first period of the first game of this first-round series against the defending champions for the Toronto Maple Leafs to dispense with all those post-season ghosts. Those shape-shifting doubts that loomed over them in the days leading up to the puck dropping on Monday night at Scotiabank Arena.
There was talk of violence, of the damage veteran, Cup-winning bulls like Pat Maroon and Corey Perry would try to inflict upon these young Maple Leafs, of whether Sheldon Keefe’s side was scrambling trying to prepare a response. There was talk of offensive juggernauts, of Stamkoses and Kucherovs and historic scoring paces in the weeks preceding this series-opening affair, of some type of otherworldliness Toronto would have to simply survive.
Twelve minutes in, these Leafs had that script crumpled up in the bin.
It started two minutes in, when T.J. Brodie was sent to the box on a hooking call, putting the Lightning’s power play monsters — Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Alex Killorn and Victor Hedman — on the ice for the first time. The Leafs weathered the storm. Eyebrows were raised.
It continued seven minutes in, when Kyle Clifford — put in the lineup for Game 1 as a clear answer for the physical punishment the Leafs expected to come their way — doled out the first dose of genuine violence, crushing Ross Colton in the numbers on the second hit of his first shift, leaving the Lightning forward checking for lost teeth.
In response, the officials handed Clifford a five-minute major and a game misconduct. The bruising Leaf had made an impact, as predicted, but surely not the one his coach had expected, or hoped for.
And yet, in an odd twist of fate that could wind up being a microcosm for this whole series should Toronto do what it hopes to — the Maple Leafs found life in the tougher path. They held the fort for five minutes straight, stymying Jon Cooper’s pack of all-stars at every turn. But stymying was just the half of it — they flat out dominated the Bolts on the penalty kill.
There were Alex Kerfoot and Mitch Marner breaking out on a shorthanded two-on-one, the former ringing a shot off the post, the crowd humming with a tense mixture of shock and nerves. There were Marner, Colin Backwell and T.J. Brodie pushing things back up ice shorthanded. Then Kerfoot and Mark Giordano.
The Maple Leafs’ penalty kill — dubbed their “pressure kill” by Keefe during the regular season — not only nullified Tampa Bay’s elite power play. It chewed it up and spat it back out. By the time the five-minute major wrapped up, the Bolts had managed two chances. The Leafs had managed three shorthanded. The crowd was roaring in approval for the home side. And Kucherov was being marched to the box himself, his frustration boiling over into a stiff cross-check delivered in the final moments of his club’s failed man-advantage.
Twelve minutes into that first period, and there was little wondering whether the Leafs are in fact as “soft” as Maroon has suggested in recent weeks, Colton witness enough to Toronto’s ability to throw its weight around. Twelve minutes, and the Leafs proved to themselves — in as extreme a circumstance as you could draw up — that they can hang with the two-time reigning champs.
Sat on folding chairs in the bowels of Scotiabank Arena post-game, dejected after what finished as a 5-0 Game 1 drubbing at the hands of the home side, the Lightning’s leaders pointed to those opening 12 minutes in diagnosing where it all unravelled.
“It could’ve been a really different game if we had scored early on that,” Stamkos said of the five-minute man-advantage. “That was a missed opportunity for us.”
His head coach went a step further, conceding the Maple Leafs’ stifling kill dropped a fleck of frustration into the alchemy of the Lightning’s mindset, which only spread as the night wore on.
“I think when we let the seven minutes of power-play time slide there — and not only not do anything with it, but give them chance after chance — probably a little bit of frustration set in there, that we didn’t need to put upon ourselves,” said Cooper. “Would you love all that power-play time? Yes. But if you don’t do something with it, it can be a game of momentum, and I think it clearly swung in their direction after that.”
Meanwhile, the vibes a few feet to their left were every bit the opposite over those crucial five minutes.
“The energy of our bench did not change, despite knowing you’re going to have to kill a five-minute major against one of the hottest power plays in the NHL. Elite, elite players. I didn’t see the energy of our group change,” Keefe said.
“I just loved that we didn’t get down,” said Auston Matthews. “I heard somebody say on the bench, ‘Let’s try to use this as momentum.’ And that’s exactly what the guys did out there. They created a lot of opportunities for themselves.”
“We didn’t get frustrated with anything,” added Marner. “We just stayed calm with it.”
The Maple Leafs didn’t let up after cleaning the slate with that opening dozen minutes. They kept the chances rolling as Kucherov sat in the box. They kept them rolling soon after as Mikhail Sergachev took his own spin in the box, called for holding after William Nylander put his shoulder down and bulldozed past the Bolts defender, forcing the infraction.
And just when Tampa Bay might’ve begun to salvage some swagger from killing off a couple of its own infractions, the Maple Leafs marched up the ice moments after the Bolts killed off Sergachev’s penalty, battled for the puck below the goal line and shoveled it back to Jake Muzzin, who wired a slapper from the left point directly into the twine just behind reigning Conn Smythe Trophy winner Andrei Vasilevskiy.
By the end of the night, the special-teams battle was a wash, the second period delivering two more sterling moments — a statement Marner-to-Matthews one-timer on the power play, and a short-handed tally that saw David Kampf outrace Hedman and outplay Vasilevskiy one-on-one.
“Our team seemed to be unflappable tonight,” Keefe said of that special-teams dominance. “We got an early kill — no problem. We had a five-minute major — no problem. Just go out, win a faceoff, get our work done. … We had a five-on-three — call a timeout, get organized, go out, shoot it in the net. All the way through, our team was extremely focused, and we went out and executed.”
That it was in this particular way that Toronto ate up the Lightning in Game 1 is key for where the series goes from here, particularly because of what exactly loomed over them heading in. Faced with the daunting task of handling the Lightning’s physicality, the Maple Leafs used that weapon against Tampa Bay, burning their opponent on the power play when the officials sent Bolts to the box for stepping over the line, and standing their ground late in the game when the refs let them handle it on the ice — Morgan Rielly, in particular, showing far more fight than most would’ve given him credit for coming into the night.
And even when the Maple Leafs took their own attempts at physicality too far, landing themselves in the box, they simply feasted there too, courtesy of that pressure kill.
If Cooper’s to be believed, you can chalk up part of the way it all shook out — specifically, the manner in which the game was called — to his opposing coach’s comments in the lead-up to this opening tilt.
“I think there was probably a little bit too much made of it,” Cooper said of the expected physicality coming into the series. “I heard the word ‘violent’ was thrown around earlier today. Like, come on.
“Maybe that gets in guys’ ears, and it’s like, ‘Keep control of this series.’ In a series that hadn’t started yet. … There was probably a little heightened awareness of it coming into the series.”
With the opening 60 in the books, there’s sure to be some heightened awareness on the part of the Lightning, too, when the two teams return to the ice for Game 2 on Wednesday. Anyone who’s glimpsed even a portion of Tampa Bay’s past two Cup runs is well-aware of the defending champs’ ability to bounce back after tough losses, and the next time out will be no different.
But after seeing the Maple Leafs dismantle their best-laid plans, after seeing them show some unexpected fight, the Lightning head into Game 2 knowing they’ll need an adjusted approach, realizing it isn’t going to come quite as easy as they might’ve thought.
Just as they found in those opening 12 minutes.
“I think when you’re used to getting on the power play and going to centre ice after you scored, at some point I think maybe you thought it was a right, that it was just going to happen again,” Cooper said of that early momentum-swinging kill.
“Toronto had other ideas.”
