Game Day
Preview and GDT: Eastern Conference Quarterfinal Game #7, Maple Leafs at Boston Bruins (7 p.m., CBC)
Strap yourselves in. The biggest Leaf game in nearly a decade is just a few hours away.
Do the Leafs have the momentum, is Boston frustrated, does Boston feel the pressure more, did their delayed flight help them or hurt them? It's all academic. Come puck drop tonight, this series is reset to a best of one and it comes down to who executes better over the 60 minutes. [more…]
With their backs against the wall, the Maple Leafs will look to force a seventh game by winning at home for the first time this postseason.
Toronto will undoubtedly play with the desperation they showed for most of Friday night. The difference tonight will be that the Bruins are also starting to feel the pressure. Boston will be throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the Leafs and James Reimer in an effort to close out this series. With the continuing struggles of Seguin and Marchand, the offensive load will likely be carried by the Krejci line.
At the other end of the ice, two feisty Leafs centers in Mikhail Grabovski and Nazem Kadri earnestly want to make a contribution of their own to their team's success. With the way Grabovski has elevated his game in these playoffs, it should only be a matter of time before the Belorussian finds his name on the scoresheet. [more…]
Preview and GDT: Eastern Conference Quarterfinal Game #5, Maple Leafs at Boston Bruins (7 p.m., CBC)
Do or die. Win or go home. Put up or shut up. [List other cliches here].
The Leafs look to keep things interesting in this series and give us all more Leaf playoff hockey to enjoy by extending the series past five games with a win tonight.
The Leafs have a right to feel a little hard done by with this 1-3 series deficit. Point fingers at certain individuals if it's your thing, but the fact of the matter is that Toronto, despite looking every bit Boston's match over the last 3 games, has made the crucial mistakes that are costing them games. Boston almost always has capitalized opportunistically. [more…]
Toronto looks for their 1st win on home ice in this series (and in 9 years) and you can expect that they will be a little less tight in the 1st period than they were in their 1st playoff game at the ACC on Monday night. Toronto has been getting progressively better during the series and looks to be the match of Boston if they play their system and don't gift them goals like did the entire game on Monday. [more…]
The unexpected catharsis of Saturday’s night win in Boston has provided Leafs Nation with a much needed release of some tension and anger after game one’s eye-opening reality check.
The Leafs are now heading into Toronto tied with Boston after stealing home-ice advantage. For the first time since 2004, our Toronto Maple Leafs will host a playoff game in the Air Canada Centre! [more…]
The three day break has given us much time to digest the events of Wednesday night. The Leafs can draw inspiration from the inexperienced Islanders last night with the way that team was blown out in game 1, looked to be in the process of getting blown out early in game 2, fought back, and now find themselves on equal footing in a best of five series against the heavily favoured Penguins. All we can do is hope the Leafs make the necessary adjustments and find something more within themselves tonight in Boston. [more…]
We are within 2 hours (update: 1 hour, 50 minutes) (update 1 hour, 49 minutes) (update 1 hour, 48 minutes) of the moment we've all been waiting for - Leafs playoff hockey.
No official word on final lineup combinations as of yet but we'll update as soon as we know. [more…]
Look at that glorious playoff ice paint. I haven’t been this excited about ice paint since... well, when the Leafs painted on their logo at center ice and streamed it online during the lockout. Desperate times, let’s not talk about it. After all IT’S PLAYOFF GAME DAY! [more…]
Playoff preview? A primer for Tuesday night? With a win, the Leafs could go a long way in making it so. The playoff implications have been laid out here for this final game of the regular season for these two rivals.
As if this game didn't already have enough intrigue, Brendan Gallagher, proud owner of arguably the douchiest face in the National Hockey League, made a douchey remark about how Nazem Kadri plays scared when he's on the ice, something the vast majority of us failed to notice between the two or three times Kadri ran Gallagher over last game. [more…]
After allowing 5 goals a game while losing three of their last four, the Leafs need to stop the bleeding against the lowly Panthers tonight or else risk falling down the standings into the matchup no one wants against the Washington Capitals. [more…]
Last night was a good night on the out of town scoreboard for the Leafs. The Sens, Isles, Rangers, Habs and Bruins all played and only the Islanders collected a point. This puts the Leafs in control over their own home ice destiny, now four points back of the Habs with a game in hand and a meeting against Montreal left on the schedule. To me, there's no question, Montreal is the ideal first round opponent given a) how the Leafs have matched up against them and b) they appear to be slumping at the worst possible time.
The Leafs have a chance here to feel good about themselves with wins against the bottom two teams in the Eastern Conference in the next 24 hours. Randy Carlyle is doing a smart thing by getting all of his players into game action ahead of the post-season in this back to back set, as he will reportedly ice a fourth line of Joe Colborne, Matt Frattin and Clarke MacArthur tonight. This should help keep the players who have been in and out of the press box sharp while giving Carlyle the ability to roll four lines and reduce the workload for the big guns. And a nice looking four lines it is: [more…]
The Leafs head to a rink of warm recent memories tonight, looking to get out of a two-game funk in which they've been outscored 10-4 and outshot 75-51.
Back at the 42 game mark, with six games to go, the only scenario in which the Leafs could even possibly risk losing their playoff berth was if they were to lose out while all the teams placed 6-9 below them finished really strong. That has unfortunately played itself out a little bit over the past few days. The Rangers won again last night, and combined with Senators, Rangers, Islanders and Jets wins on Thursday, it puts the Leafs only 3 ahead of 8th and 5 up on 9th. That's still a pretty healthy margin on 9th with only 4 games to go, but the Leafs have to start winning. Even if the Jets do them a favour and lose, falling to 7th or 8th obviously puts the Leafs in a rough matchup for round 1. [more…]
