SUNRISE, Fla. — Auston Matthews hadn’t scored towards Florida in additional than a yr. He ended the drought — and might need additionally saved Toronto’s season.
Matthews received his first objective 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 Sport 6 of the Jap Convention semifinal sequence Friday night time.
“Only a gutsy, gutsy win,” Matthews stated.
Sport 7 is Sunday night time in Toronto. The winner will face Carolina within the East last.
“We performed a easy sport tonight,” Leafs coach Craig Berube stated.
Easy, however efficient. Toronto blocked 31 photographs, plus killed off all 4 Florida energy performs.
Max Pacioretty added an insurance coverage objective 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 previous three postseasons.
“You win otherwise you be taught,” Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov stated. “Tonight, we discovered.”
Florida coach Paul Maurice is 5-0 in Sport 7s, together with the ultimate sport of final season’s Stanley Cup Remaining. The Panthers are 3-1 all time within the final sport of a sequence — 2-0 on the highway — whereas the Maple Leafs have misplaced every of their previous six Sport 7s. Of these, 4 had been towards Boston and now-Panthers ahead Brad Marchand.
“We’re not going to indicate any video of these Sport 7s,” Maurice stated. “We’ll have a look at our sport tonight and see the place we will get higher.”
It was the 68th sport of this season’s playoffs — and solely the second that was 0-0 after 40 minutes. The opposite was Wednesday night time, when Edmonton eradicated Vegas with a 1-0 victory in extra time in Sport 5 of that Western Convention semifinal sequence.
Toronto had 5 targets in Sport 1, 4 extra in Sport 2 and had three by the early goings of the second interval of Sport 3. Add it up, and that was 12 in mainly the primary seven durations of the sequence.
From there, Toronto received mainly nothing — till Matthews broke by.
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 3½ video games — 216 minutes, 30 seconds, to be exact.
However when a go received 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 is a large win, from high to backside,” Matthews stated. “We earned that.”
