Yeah, I wouldn’t be so sure. The Toronto Maple Leafs absolutely destroyed a badly depleted Tampa Bay Lighting team 7-2 to tie the series and prevent disaster, but is this result really indicative of the Leafs’ potential?
If you couldn’t tell by the intro, I’m not so sure this loss is all that reflective of how good the Leafs’ chances of making out of the First Round actually are.
As everyone has seen by now, the Toronto Maple Leafs utterly annihilated the Tampa Bay Lightning 7-2 in Game 2 to even the series at 1 a piece and prevent a disastrous 0-2 deficit as the series heads down to Tampa Bay.
It really was one of the single greatest playoff performances I’ve seen out of this Toronto team yet as not only did this team ward off the overwhelming pressure of going down 0-2 to the 3X defending Eastern Conference champions, but their star players also showed up.
Mitch Marner continued his hot streak to start off the series as he added 2 goals and 1 assist to bring his playoff totals up to 6 PTS, John Tavares became the first Maple Leafs player in over twenty years to score a playoff hattrick as he posted some of the most important goals of the night (2nd Maple Leafs goal, 4th Maple Leafs goal), Morgan Rielly had a game-high 4 PTS (4 A) to finally get this Maple Leafs blue line in on the scoring, and William Nylander continued to be the most consistent performer of the “Fantastic Four” with 2 more points (1 G, 1 A).
Of course, a Maple Leafs playoff game where at least one of their big stars shriveled under the spotlight just simply cannot exist as Auston Matthews, who is still scoreless despite his team posting 10 goals in 2 games, had just two meager secondary assists.
Regardless, the Maple Leafs pretty much blew the Lighting out from the get-go as they went up 3-0 in under 5 minutes to start off the 1st period, they pushed their lead back up to 3 goals almost immediately after Ian Cole put the Lightning on the board midway through the 2nd, and then they proceeded to DESTROY Tampa Bay’s backline with THREE 2nd period goals to ice this game before the final twenty minutes were played.
Moreover, the Leafs were more than up for the physicality brought by the Lightning as even though they were outhit (53-41) and had less penalty minutes (49-23), they were still able to keep their cool and focus on running up the score.
That may sound trivial enough, but you’d be surprised how many teams would fall for the bait the likes of Corey Perry, Zach Bogosian, Patrick Maroon, Tanner Jeannot, and Mikhail Sergachev were pushing out and wind up in the penalty box alongside those guys.
So, with all of this scoring, fighting, physicality, and determination, the Maple Leafs must have proved they’re not the choking phonies that they’ve been these last six years (well, more like 20 years, but this team has only been together for 6 years), right? Eh…I wouldn’t be so sure.
Not only have the Leafs done this song and dance before (aka: the 5-0 win in Game 1 vs. Bolts in 2022, the 4-0 win in Game 4 vs. Habs in 2021, the 4-3 win in Game 4 vs. Blue Jackets in 2020, and the 3-1 win in Game 6 vs. Bruins in 2018), but the Lightning were without two of three best defensemen: Erik Cernak AND Victor Headman.
Now, I’m sure Maple Leafs fans will say that the Lightning having Hedman and Cernak in the lineup wouldn’t have matted as they won 7-2, and that’s a fair point as two defensemen, no matter how good they are, couldn’t have stopped that route from happening once the Leafs went up 3-0, 4-1, 5-1, 6-1, and finally 7-2.
Yet, if the Lightning had Hedman and Cernak in the lineup, there’s no way the Leafs would have gone up 3-0, let alone 5-1 or 6-1, that early on in the game.
In Game 1, despite only playing 6:35 and 9:27, respectively, Hedman and Cernak were a combined +2, they had 3 hits, and had 4 blocked shots in less than 15 minutes of combined ice time. That’s a higher +/- rating than all six of the Maple Leafs defenders (collectively -2) COMBINED!
Obviously, Andrei Vasilevskiy saving 28/31 shots to post a .903 SV% and the rest of the defensive core completely shutting out the Maple Leafs for 2/3 periods (Leafs scored twice in the 2nd, then once in garbage time in the 3rd) played bigger roles in the Bolts win than Hedman and Cernak, but their contribution shouldn’t be discredited.
These two are crucial for any playoff run the Lightning hope to go on, and their importance to this team was on full display last night as the Bolts defense was essentially rudderless without the leadership of Hedman and Cernak.
So, I’m not completely disregarding performance the Leafs had last night as they were electric, but I need to see them either do play that way over 3 of the next 5 games or do it when Hedman and Cernak are in the Lightnings’ lineup.
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