Maple Leafs overcome troublesome start to push Lightning to brink & More Trending News

TORONTO – The first was troublesome.

The center was encouraging.

And the finale?

Well, we wouldn’t blame you if it stole your breath away.

In profitable a pivotal Game 5 by a rating of 4-3 and securing a 3-2 collection benefit over the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Toronto Maple Leafs — and their emotionally swinging fan base — rode the curler coaster as solely they know the way.

And what a journey it was.

Not not like Sunday’s no-show in Tampa, the Maple Leafs regarded misplaced and discombobulated by means of the primary 20 minutes.

This time, Cup-hoister Steven Stamkos waited till the membership’s second shot to blast the opening objective previous Jack Campbell.

And when Norris finalist Victor Hedman’s power-play sifter bulged the web 52 seconds later, the hopeful Scotiabank Arena trustworthy turned deathly quiet.

Borderline silent.

They had witnessed the Leafs give up two targets earlier than registering two measly pictures of their very own.

“One team has been really going, and one team has not,” stated Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe, summing up the primary 4 video games of this seesaw set.

Entirely and familiarly, it appeared Toronto can be the one not going. The Leafs had been outshot foolish within the first body, 14-4. They had been ineffective on three power-plays and uninterested within the puck battles.

“Shoot! The! Puck!” roared the stressed hundreds.

Following a morning of swearing that they had grasped how strictly the officers would name the foundations, William Nylander dedicated a poor holding penalty 200 ft from Campbell’s cage. Mitch Marner hooked Ryan McDonagh within the Tampa zone six seconds right into a Toronto power-play.

“Every game has kinda been called the same, so we should have an understanding for it now,” Marner stated.

Yet they didn’t present it.

Heading into the second interval, the Leafs desperately wanted a objective, a break — and received one, within the type of Tampa’s second too-many-men penalty of the evening.

Toronto’s power-play clicked, and captain John Tavares popped on the board when he deflected a William Nylander shot previous Andrei Vasilevskiy.

The crowd woke up, alert for the comeback.

Tavares arrange Morgan Rielly to tie the sport early within the third, and Nylander rode a giddy wave right into a laser of a shot that gave the Leafs a lead — and signalled the primary lead change of the entire collection.

Ryan McDonagh knotted the evening again up with an absolute bomb of a slap shot from the excessive slot.

But a Marner–Auston Matthews 2-on-1 rush with 6:06 remaining on the clock resulted in a Marner shot, a Matthews no-doubter rebound, and a objective celebration so emphatic it may’ve knocked out a heavyweight champion.

“It’s about keeping yourself together, because there’s ebbs and flows. The series never goes your way the whole time,” Jon Cooper stated. “So when adversity hits, how are you going to handle it?”

The Series of the Counterpunchers shifts again to Tampa, the place all of the strain now falls on Cooper’s bunch, their threepeat bid on life assist.

How are they going to deal with it?

Fox’s Fast 5

• Keefe flipped Mark Giordano onto the highest power-play unit and dropped Rielly to the second unit in Period 2.

• Campbell has Nick Paul’s quantity this collection.

• Patrick Maroon, girls and gents:

• The Leafs quickly misplaced fourth-liner Colin Blackwell within the first interval when he took a Hedman clearing try to the pinnacle. He returned for the second and was buzzing.

• Patrick Marleau on Matthews and Marner in his Players’ Tribune retirement column: “Watching them and their love of the game made me fall in love with hockey all over again. I have no doubt that those guys will win a Cup one day, and when they do, I know they’ll remember all those mini-stick battles in the basement.”

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