The Toronto Maple Leafs are onto the second spherical of the Stanley Cup playoffs after defeating the Ottawa Senators, 4-2, in Recreation 6 on Thursday night time to clinch their first-round sequence.
It’s a big win for a Toronto workforce that needed to be feeling the partitions beginning to crash in round it after shedding back-to-back video games with a 3-0 sequence lead.
Whereas it ended up getting a mixed three objectives from two of its greatest stars — Auston Matthew and William Nylander — it was an unlikely hero that ended up scoring an important purpose to avoid wasting the sequence and ship it by means of to the second spherical.
That hero — veteran ahead Max Pacioretty.
Pacioretty scored the game-winning purpose with below six minutes to play in regulation, giving him his first postseason purpose since 2021 when he was nonetheless a member of the Vegas Golden Knights.
It’s not simply the truth that purpose gave Toronto the lead late within the third interval of an elimination recreation. It’s that it got here just a bit greater than a minute after Ottawa had tied the sport, doubtlessly unleashing the entire playoff demons which have haunted the Maple Leafs for the higher a part of the previous decade.
This can be a core that, previous to this season, had superior past the primary spherical only one time in eight years.
It’s a core that entered Thursday’s recreation with a 1-13 report in its previous 14 video games the place it had an opportunity to remove an opponent. It’s a core that has invented new methods to lose video games and sequence. It’s a core that has persistently failed to provide in must-win video games
It reached a degree of their Recreation 5 loss again in Toronto that the followers had been performing like they had been those down within the sequence.
If Toronto had misplaced this recreation and gone again house for a Recreation 7, having misplaced three consecutive video games, the vibes in that enviornment would have been horrific. The dialogue main as much as that recreation would have been chaotic. Individuals would have been ready for them to lose.
When the Senators tied the sport late within the third interval, it virtually appeared inevitable that they had been going to be on their means again to Toronto for a winner-take-all Recreation 7 on Saturday night time.
Thanks largely to Pacioretty, the Leafs don’t have to fret about any of that. They’re by means of, and now they’ve to arrange for the defending Stanley Cup-champion Florida Panthers.
Pacioretty joined the Maple Leafs this previous offseason on a one-year. $873K contract. He scored 5 objectives with 13 factors in 37 video games. At his peak, he was among the finest goal-scorers within the NHL with Montreal and Vegas, however accidents have considerably restricted him the previous few years.
Because the begin of the 2022-23 season he has scored simply 12 objectives in solely 89 common season video games. The Maple Leafs solely care in regards to the purpose he scored on Thursday.
