It was a night of many boxes checked for the Maple Leafs, who clinched the Atlantic Division, swept the Buffalo Sabres with a 4-0 win, and accomplished two individual milestones in the penultimate game of the regular season.

Your game in 10:

1.   On a night all about the team accomplishment of clinching the division/drawing the Senators in round one plus a pair of individual milestones, let’s start instead with Anthony Stolarz’s 35-save shutout performance.

The first-period Sabres power play, and particularly the late Buffalo 6-on-5, were “This guy is simply not getting beaten tonight” type of sequences, as the Sabres worked the puck around and pounded shot attempts. He was so dialed with his puck tracking and positionally on point, and when combined with his 6’6 frame, it seemed like he was a cheat code in the Leaf net tonight. Buffalo is offensively threatening and created plenty of looks over the 60 minutes; they were credited with 3.7 expected goals over all situations, so Stolarz stopped about four goals above expected.

Stolarz was tested with the month-long injury rehab in December-January and his five-game losing streak to start March. As he’s surpassed his career high in NHL games played, he’s piled up eight wins in a row, including three shutouts and a  .950 save percentage, placing him at an NHL-best .926 for the season among goalies with a minimum 25 starts.

Huge credit to Stolarz for leaving no doubt about the Game 1 starter in a season when the Leafs have greatly benefitted from healthy competition between two consistently good goalies. It required something spectacular down the stretch to separate himself to the point where not many in the market will bat an eye or second-guess him starting Game 1.

2.   Steven Lorentz seems to only score big goals. Lost in the shuffle of the division-clinching win, the Marner milestone, the Matthews milestone, and the Stolarz shutout is that Lorentz just scored his fifth game-winner of the season with his eighth goal of the year late in the second period of this game. That’s three more game-winners than Matthews.

One of the non-GWG goals was an empty-netter to make it 3-0 vs. Boston, but the other two were an important insurance goal after the Leafs came back from 3-0 down against the Canadiens in January and a first-period goal when the Leafs blitzed the Devils early in the second game of the season following the opening-night loss in Montreal.

Does the local boy have a big one or two in him in the playoffs?

3.   It’s maybe not saying much, given his start, but Scott Laughton is clearly playing his best stretch of Leaf hockey so far, and he’s doing it at center on a worker line with Lorentz and Calle Jarnkrok.

His play on the 1-0 Lorentz goal was a good example of why he’s a credible 40-ish point player in the league year over year (not that you’d know it from his start in Toronto), as he protected the puck well along the wall and picked out Lorentz in the slot with a nice backhand pass into the wheelhouse. He fired one high after a nice move in tight off the rush in this game and fired one off the bar shorthanded in Carolina. The scoring chances he’s getting and creating for others are starting to trend in the right direction.

The middle six may see a shuffle before Game 1, but this line appears set as the L4 for Game 1, with Kampf serving as the extra body. They’ve hardly started a shift in the offensive zone (a total of two of their 39 faceoffs together have come in the o-zone), and their underlying numbers reflect that, but they’re hanging in there with a 1-1 goal share at five-on-five. They played more than the other bottom-six line tonight as the game was tight and the Leafs protected a lead down the stretch.

4.    If that fourth line could successfully alleviate a little bit of the defensive burden on the Leafs’ top line, it can add up on the margins within the playoff matchup game. Notably, Matthews-Marner started just 53% of their faceoffs in the offensive zone this season. When the Leafs won a round in 2023, they were at 70% in the playoffs (and 67% in the preceding regular season). The Ryan O’Reilly-Noel Acciari line gave Sheldon Keefe a credible checking option to soak up defensive-zone starts, and while Laughton is no ROR, the hope is that the trio could help ease the burden a little on the overtaxed Matthews and Marner. Notably, Laughton has won 56% of his faceoffs in Toronto, including 62% tonight.

5.   At a time when the Leafs’ underlying numbers are trending in a somewhat concerning direction — 32nd in the NHL since Mar. 1 at 43.5% CF, and 29th in the NHL for the season — this Bobby McMann–Pontus Holmberg–Nick Robertson line has spent much of its five-on-five time in the right end of the rink: they’re controlling 70% of the shots on goal through 60 minutes together this season, and they are up 2-0 in goals (67% expected goals).

Adding a worker bee to the line in Holmberg, who is strong on pucks and works hard to get them back, along with McMann and Robertson’s speed and shooting ability, has seen them possess the puck quite a bit and threaten offensively. The question is what they give up when they don’t have the puck and what they can create offensively inside their matchups against deeper, playoff-calibre opposition. Berube clearly doesn’t trust it fully, playing them only 10-11 minutes tonight in a game that was tight until late on. That’s not enough ice time for McMann, who was showing signs of fighting through his slump tonight, stretching the ice with his speed and eagerly shooting more.

The previous assumption has been that Max Pacioretty comes off LTIR to factor into the playoff lineup, and Max Domi moves back down to 3C, but we’ll see what Berube has in store.

6.   Speaking of McMann, he fired five shots on goal in just over 11 minutes of ice time tonight after five shots on goal total in his previous five games. For Thursday’s game against Detroit, if there is one smaller box the Leafs haven’t checked off yet, it’s getting McMann’s slump busted. He ended his pointless streak with the secondary assist on Robertson’s garbage-time 4-0 goal, but he’s without a goal in 10 straight after hitting the 20-goal mark in his first 63 games. When he’s rolling, he can change a game.

7.   As for those concerning underlying five-on-five numbers mentioned earlier, it is notable that the Leafs have been down a key piece on the blue line in Jake McCabe recently (and Oliver Ekman-Larsson for the last two games). But they need to stiffen up in terms of holding their blue line more aggressively instead of backing off, as the neutral zone has too often been open season for the opposition recently, visible again in the first period tonight (when the Sabres owned the shots, shot attempts, and scoring chances at five-on-five).

The Leafs are showing great commitment to protecting the middle ice defensively and getting in shooting lanes, but they also generally need to get plays killed quicker in their own zone and break out cleaner once the playoffs are rolling. Craig Berube needs to ensure that while he’s regularly praising the team’s impressive ability to protect the interior, get in shooting lanes, box out, and get great goaltending, he isn’t losing sight of the fact that the team can’t spend this much time defending against good teams, especially if the PK is wobbly (it’s hard to win the penalty differential when you possess the puck less than the opposition).

8.   Indeed, the penalty kill is going to have to find answers quickly. They didn’t concede tonight, but the first-period Buffalo power play was a concerning example of how it’s gone for them too often down the stretch. They were simultaneously not particularly aggressive with their puck pressure while also leaving seams completely agape, as Buffalo worked it through the seams at will. Great goaltending will cover for a lot of sins, but it won’t be able to consistently stop clean seam plays from the top teams.

The coaching staff needs to take the warning signs seriously in practice this week and try to get a solid game plan together. The Senators show as a mid-pack team on the power play over the season as a whole, but they have shown the ability to heat up with a 42% month in October and a solid 26-27% in February and March. Jake Sanderson is dynamic with his movement from the top, Brady Tkachuk is tied for fifth in the NHL in power-play goals with 14 as an elite net-front threat, and Drake Batherson is not far behind Tkachuk at 12 PPG as he effectively finishes off passes through the slot or low seams.

9.   I don’t want to poop on anyone’s party here whatsoever, and if it means something to the player and fan base, those are nothing but positive vibes I can get on board with. Personally, individual accomplishments celebrating round numbers don’t get much of a rise out of me; 97 in 72 was a 110-point pace, 99 in 80 was a 100+ point pace, and 85 in 69 was a 100+ point pace; those were Mitch Marner’s previous three seasons.

Most importantly, Marner had a big 4 Nations tournament win, has come up with big moments in several big games this season, and now can check this 100-point milestone off his list (he had a bus-full of family and friends come down to Buffalo in hopes of celebrating it, and after a frustrating night of close calls, he stuck with it and scored one late). He looks supremely confident and in control inside his clearly defined role at the top of the power play, where he nearly set up Matthews and Knies for goals tonight. That’s notable, as he’s often struggled on the power play down the stretch and into the playoffs.

If 100 points helps him gain even a little more swagger ahead of the playoffs, it only helps the Leafs’ cause. Congrats to Marner on achieving it in a season full of off-ice distractions and storylines/media chatter.

10.    It is easy to hand-wave away regular-season accomplishments with this Leafs team nine years into the journey with this core. I fully understand those who aren’t popping any champagne tonight, but the gap between a healthy Florida and Ottawa is notable, and home-ice advantage is notable. If Washington doesn’t emerge from the other side of the bracket, the Leafs could have home-ice advantage all the way through because they’ve also locked up second in the conference. At a minimum, they start the first two rounds at home, and any Game 7 in those series will be played on their turf, where they’ve had a bounce-back season after a tough year on home ice in 2023-24.

This division is extremely hard; the margins between the top three in the Atlantic are minuscule, and the Leafs lost all three games this season to the fourth-place team in the division/their now-playoff opponent. Every advantage matters.

The Leafs’ playoff track record isn’t an example of why the regular season is a total waste of time to care about; every recent series has been an example of how tight the margins are and how Toronto is in no position not to be stacking the deck in their favour as much as possible, which they’ve never actually done before in the Atlantic Division. Kudos to them for taking it seriously, turning it on down the stretch, and getting it done with a game to spare.

Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Game Highlights w/ Joe Bowen & Jim Ralph

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