When you win games such as Game 2 you build a certain confidence, a certain character, an internal belief
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This is how you work your way to the Stanley Cup Final: You win playoff games when you aren’t necessarily the best team on the ice.
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You win when you’re not using your goaltender of choice.
You win when you discover a way to keep the puck to the outside, even when you don’t always own it and it looks like, at times, being overwhelmed.
You win when the calmness of your coach, and the calmness of your second string goalie, matches the calmness of your fourth line centre, and the calmness of your stars on right wing to find a way to make a difference in the second straight one-goal victory over the Stanley Cup champions.
This is a rather stirring place the Maple Leafs find themselves in so suddenly — up 2-0 against the Florida Panthers, the team nobody of sound mind would want to play against. This is a rather stirring place, halfway through to the next round of the playoffs: There is a certain crazy excitement to all of this in a Toronto that has waited forever to be in this place.
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You don’t want to get ahead of yourself. You can’t, really. But truth is truth here: You are what your record says you are. The last time this Florida team was down 2-0 in a series, they lost a five-game Cup Final to the Vegas Golden Knights.
The last time the Leafs led 2-0 in the second round after leading 2-0 in the first round was as recently as 1963, some 62 years ago, at a time when it took just two playoff rounds to win the Cup.
What’s absolutely stirring now is that the Leafs are within two wins of the Conference Final. A place no Leafs team has been near since the late Pat Quinn was coaching and the Hall of Famer Mats Sundin was the captain.
This isn’t just two wins for the Leafs. It’s about how they’ve won and how they’ve scored and what they’ve been able to overcome — some of it likely, some of it unlikely — in six periods of work in the series.
William Nylander scored a how-did-he-do-that goal in the second period, which comes so naturally to him and almost no one else on the planet, tying the game at 2-2 in the second period. And the electric Mitch Marner, after becoming a dad and celebrating a birthday, completed the trifecta by scoring the game winner, firing a puck from the boards that somehow beat Bobrovsky. Maybe the great Bob was screened on the shot. Maybe it wasn’t clear for the Florida goalie. Whatever happened, Marner scored, his arms exploding in celebration from his knees.
This looked a lot like one of those overtime goals that only goes in because its overtime. A seeing eye shot on some kind. But look at the history of the seeing eye pucks over the years: This is how teams win unlikely games in the post-season, with style and finesse and bounces, lots of bounces.
Toronto has scored nine goals in two games against the historically great Bobrovsky. The last time the Leafs played the Panthers in the post season, they scored 10 goals on Bobrovsky: That was in five games.
This is nine in two games on Bob.
And that by itself is reason to believe.
Now the Leafs fly to Florida Thursday with a two-game lead. Nobody should beat this Leaf team four out of five. They’re too deep. They’re too talented. They’re too well coached. But you have to play the games and win them and succeed from a point of advantage now.
When you win games such as Game 2 you build a certain confidence, a certain character, an internal belief. What didn’t seem possible two years ago or last year or maybe even last week, seems more than possible today.
It happens because of a shot block, and a kick save, and a banked puck off the boards, and a race for a loose puck, and a 1-on-1 battle not just won, but with shoulders and hips in the right position on the play.
This is hockey at its random best. It wasn’t until there were four seconds to play, after the Leafs cleared the puck out of their end, that the rather elated crowd at Scotiabank Arena got crazy noisy.
Crazy noisy it was. But if began Wednesday night in goal with Joseph Woll, who wasn’t supposed to play in this series. But then Sam Bennett took care of Anthony Stolarz and the Leafs had to do what no team wants to do in the post-season.
They had to turn to their second choice in net.
The first goal by Sasha Barkov looked like it was something Woll should have stopped. He looked to play so much of the first half of the game too deep in his goal.
And when the Leafs were scored on 15 seconds into the second period, you figured it wasn’t their night.
Woll gave up two goals in the first 20 minutes and 15 seconds of the game and just one more goal in the final 39 minutes and 45 seconds. One goal on the final 21 shots. Woll knocked one puck off the goal line, kicked another out a toe save: Much as Florida had the puck and had traffic around the Toronto goal, it didn’t add up to scoring enough.
The Leafs got four goals from four different scorers, and eight assists from seven different players. A player on each of their four forward lines and all of their three defensive pairs wound up with a point.
That’s what happens for winning teams. And that’s what the Maple Leafs are after two games in this series — a winning team.
ssimmons@postmedia.com
x.com/simmonssteve
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