BOSTON — “Strange,” Sheldon Keefe thought, Tuesday morning, after he needed assistance locating the coaches’ room inside the bowels of TD Garden.
Here he was, the 12th-longest-tenured coach in the NHL, yet this was his first time behind the Toronto Maple Leafs bench in Boston — the long-awaited final stop on his jostling tour of the league.
Well, it was one to remember.
Keefe’s Leafs walked into the Garden, sat in a visitors’ dressing room still stirring with ghosts of playoffs past, then came onto the ice and blazed the home side with a 6-4 victory that was as convincing as it was concerning.
“Certainly, these are the types of games where you want to be great,” Keefe said. “This Boston team’s been as good or better than anybody in the league for the last couple months.”
First, the good news for Leafs fans.
Kicking the week off with consecutive wins over Florida and Boston sends a memo to their fellow Atlantic Division rivals. The Maple Leafs care about home ice in Round 1.
Toronto got contributions from members of all four forward lines — Auston Matthews (his 49th), Mitch Marner, Alexander Kerfoot, David Kämpf, and Colin Blackwell with his first for his new club — plus defenceman Morgan Rielly. They chased Bruins starter Jeremy Swayman after two periods.
Now, the bad.
Starter Petr Mrazek left the game early after injuring his groin for the third time this season, a devastating blow for a goaltender who arrived in Beantown hot off his best two performances as a Leaf. A blow, too, for a club that already offers questionable depth at the most critical position — and did not add to that depth by the trade deadline.
In the second period, right-shot defencemen Justin Holl and Ilya Lyubushkin were each taken out of the game due to injury. Neither returned, with the club citing “precautionary reasons.”
The Maple Leafs — two points richer, three healthy men thinner — fly home to host the Winnipeg Jets on Thursday.
Fox’s Fast 5
• The salary cap will raise $1 million for 2022-23, to $82.5 million. The Maple Leafs have already committed about $73.6 million of that in player salaries.
That leaves roughly $8.9 million to re-sign RFAs Rasmus Sandin, Timothy Liljegren, Pierre Engvall, and Ondrej Kase; re-sign or replace UFAs Ilya Mikheyev, Jason Spezza, Colin Blackwell, Mark Giordano and Ilya Lyubushkin; and, most importantly, extend Jack Campbell or find a suitable substitute.
• Consider Campbell (rib) day-to-day, so don’t rule him out for a return Thursday versus Winnipeg. Perfect timing considering Mrazek’s latest injury.
“He doesn’t look far off,” Keefe says.
“He’s a big part of our team. And just his attitude and his enthusiasm in the locker room every day seeing him, it’s good,” Matthews says. “I know he’s itching to get back and play.”
• William Nylander is a team-worst and career-worst minus-14. Last season he was a plus-10.
“It’s something that I don’t like, obviously,” he says of being caught on ice for so many goals against. “It’s a s—– feeling.
“There are a couple ones, like maybe in Montreal, where I can have that guy and avoid that being a goal, but it’s just been happening in some weird ways.”
• Shooooooot!
• John Tavares now has his own granola, Recipe 91.
Canadians can buy boxes at Sobeys or online ($29.99 for two boxes).
“[My wife] Aryne and I really enjoyed the process of creating this, and we hope everyone will enjoy it as much as we do,” Tavares said.
