If a Leafs fan were to dream up a start to a playoff series for their team, this 6-2 Game 1 victory would check almost every box.

Stars produce? Check.

Power play produces? Check.

Penalty kill is respectable? Check.

Anthony Stolarz continues his form in his first career playoff start? Check.

Depth contributions? Check.

Decisive win? Check.

Your game in 10:

1.   The Leafs started this game doing exactly what we speculated they would do with the matchups. The Senators started with the Tim Stutzle line, and the Leafs immediately countered with the Auston Matthews line. The Sens followed it up with the Shane Pinto line against the John Tavares unit and the Scott Laughton line against the Dylan Cozens unit.

This neutralizes the Sens’ most effective line, which many think is Stutzle’s unit, but it’s actually been Pinto’s. He has been soaking up tough minutes and leads their teams in goals since Christmas. The Stutzle line has received heavy offensive deployment all season and hasn’t been tested defensively regularly. Again, this is why you fight for home ice for 82 games. These matchups generally favour the Leafs.

When Brandon Carlo iced the puck early on with the Pontus Holmberg line out there, Ottawa immediately threw out Stutzle’s line and tried to throw the matchups off balance. Craig Berube got it back on track in short order.

Back to the start of the game, the Leafs began this playoff game properly. If you roll through the hits early on, you see: Matthew Knies first, then Max Domi, Scott Laughton, Nick Robertson, and Bobby McMann. The Leafs got the puck in deep early and took the body, got the crowd going, and got the team going. That’s how you play playoff hockey in Toronto.

We have talked for years about this team being far too soft and not physically engaged enough to begin games, silencing the crowd and sucking the momentum out of the building. Not this time.

2.   The Leafs rode the momentum through to the game’s first goal. It started on a Senators dump into the Leafs zone where Simon Benoit tried to take it around the net and was stopped on the initial play, but Steven Lorentz — who was essentially playing centre at this point — swooped low, won the puck, and chipped it up to Calle Jarnkrok to start an odd man rush.

Jarnkrok dished it off to Laughton, who made a great pull-up move at the blue line to buy some time and space for the trailing Oliver Ekman-Larsson to join the rush. Laughton dished it off to OEL, who walked in all alone. It was a really good finish by OEL past Ullmark; just-above-the-pad shots are always difficult for goalies. Welcome back, OEL.

For Laughton, we noted at the end of the season that he put together a strong final few weeks and started to show real signs of progress in his game. He was excellent in this game and picked up a primary assist on the first goal to set the tone for the night.

Notably, the Leafs’ third line didn’t record a single point at five-on-five in the playoffs last spring. It didn’t even take them half a period this series.

3.   The Leafs kept the pressure up after their goal, and on the “fourth” line’s next shift (they’re really the third line), they almost scored again. Laughton whipped a puck to the net, Jarnkrok whacked at it, and it went off the post and nearly deflected in; Jake Sanderson cleared it off the goal line.

Right afterward, Simon Benoit laid out Dylan Cozens after he crossed the blue line and attempted a shot on net. And then the Leafs extended their lead.

On a rare shift for the Leafs’ top line against the Chabot-Jensen pairing, the Leafs’ first line took the defensive-zone faceoff. When the puck rimmed around to Jensen, Mitch Marner did well to angle himself so that Jensen didn’t have a shooting lane and he could also leak out of the zone. When Jensen put the puck back up the wall, Auston Matthews undercut Stutzle and fired a crisp pass right between Jensen and Chabot.

Marner broke in alone and finished bar down on the glove side for Ullmark. It’s one of Marner’s go-to breakaway moves; he scored the same goal against Seattle last season, for example. It’s a huge early goal in the series for Marner to get rolling in Game 1, and a great pass by Matthews as well. 

4.    This should have been a tidy first period for the Leafs that ended with a multi-goal lead. The Leafs were playing well, the crowd was buzzing, and Ottawa didn’t register a scoring chance of note. The Leafs could’ve made it 3-0 when William Nylander went in on a chance all alone, but he appeared to lose his footing after cutting back.

On the next shift, after an Ottawa rush where Stolarz made the initial save and the puck went into the corner, Carlo collected it and didn’t have any options. He tried to eat it instead of going high off the glass; it was a bad giveaway from Carlo, followed by poor goaltending.

The initial shot by Cozens in the high slot was deflected, resulting in a soft shot that slowly floated to the net. Anthony Stolarz tried to guide the shot to the corner, but it was so weak it didn’t get there, so he had to pounce on the rebound. Instead, he casually tried to collect it and couldn’t smother it.

It was really poor awareness from Stolarz, who has to battle to cover the puck. Instead, Batherson swooped in to win the rebound and cut the Leafs’ lead in half, taking a little wind out of the Leafs’ sails.

5.   Well, any concerns about Stolarz after the weak 2-1 goal were quickly squashed. His first shot on net came just over a minute into the second period on a Brady Tkachuk breakaway that he confidently saved. A few shifts later, Stolarz and Pinto squared off in a pure 1v1 moment as Pinto had the puck all alone in the slot and nobody was in front. Stolarz again stood tall.

Later on in the period, Stolarz made a massive save on the penalty kill with what looked to be the knob of his stick (in one way or another, it hit his goal stick). He battled a lot harder in front of the net as Ottawa clearly tried to throw a ton of traffic his way with shots from wherever they could fire them. It was a really impressive response to a weak goal against from Stolarz in his first-ever playoff start.

6.   The Leafs rewarded Stolarz for his great start to the second period by extending their lead just four minutes into the middle frame.

Following a boarding penalty by Stutzle where he got Tanev square on the numbers, it took John Tavares just nine seconds to score a power-play goal. After he won the draw, Marner and Nylander played pitch and catch, and Ottawa pressured them with two skaters in their diamond formation that we broke down ahead of the series. As we noted, that formation leaves Tavares wide open in the bumper and also leaves down-low plays wide open if the PP can work it around quickly.

On this play, Nylander fed Tavares with a bit of a shot-pass before Tavares tipped it on the net, followed up his own rebound, and wired it home. Honestly, it’s disrespectful to leave Tavares as open as the Sens did. He scored 38 goals this season and is six away from 500 career goals. It was easy work for him, and a big confidence-boosting power play goal.

7.   The game started to get out of hand from there as Ottawa began a parade to the penalty box. It started with a Ridly Greig cross-check to the face of Tavares because Greig didn’t want to take a hit. The play was originally assessed as a five-minute major, but it was later reduced to a two-minute minor.

Frankly, Greig should be suspended for the cross-check, as we have seen with multiple Leafs before (Matthews vs. Buffalo and Rielly vs. Greig/Ottawa). It received no discussion at the intermission panel, and while I don’t want to sit here with a tinfoil hat on, if a Leafs player did it, it would receive the Zapruder film treatment and end in a suspension. 

The Leafs made the Senators pay. Following a good chance at 5v4, Adam Gaudette boarded Matthews, sending the Leafs to a 5v3. Berube called a timeout to rest his top-unit PPers, who quickly made it worthwhile.

Once again, Tavares won a power-play faceoff, and Nylander simply skated in, grabbed the puck, and walked in all alone on the 5v3. He skated to his right then ripped the puck to his left, beating Ullmark clean. Ullmark wasn’t even close on this one.

That was the Leafs’ fourth goal on just 10 shots to this point in the game, although the Leafs did create quality looks and the shot attempts were essentially even at that stage. The Sens eventually received a makeup call later in the period, and the Leafs completed a big kill with the one big aforementioned save from Stolarz.

Of note, when Ottawa created a look on the half-wall, Chris Tanev clearly gave the shooter the shot instead of attempting to block it. He instead focused on boxing out the front of the net. It’s a clear priority for the Leafs to box out the net front against this Senators team.

8.   One of the only real weak moments for the Leafs in the game overall was their power play to start the third period. It was lethargic; they couldn’t gain the zone, the top unit established nothing, and they almost looked like they thought the game was already over. It carried through back at five-on-five, as the Leafs got tilted following the power play.

Accordingly, Ottawa scored four minutes into the period. It’s an example of the type of goal Ottawa will want to score in this series at five-on-five. Pinto pulled out high and ripped a shot on net, two Senators went to the net, and they won the battle as Ridly Greig eventually put the puck home.

The Leafs did a really good job of boxing out and winning battles in front for most of the night, but this was one that they will review on the tape as an example of what Ottawa is looking to do/what the Leafs have to defend.

9.   Late in the second period, Craig Berube flipped Max Domi and Pontus Holmberg. Domi on the second line went exactly as expected. Frankly, it might have been even worse than expected. We wrote about it repeatedly in the lead-up, but it’s three skilled players who struggle defensively, and that’s exactly how it played out.

Domi, in particular, attempted a collection of cross-ice passes through the neutral zone that were picked off repeatedly, and he was killing the line all on his own. In the third period, with Domi back at center, his line scored a goal, even though he wasn’t really involved.

Nick Robertson was good down the stretch of the regular season and carried it through to this game, throwing a few hits and making good decisions. He gained the zone with speed and curled back to create space, bumping the puck back to Morgan Rielly, who walked the line and fired a wrister through with Bobby McMann in front of the net. The shot deflected off Matthew Highmore’s glove and fooled Ullmark. If there were any nerves after the early Sens goal to start the period, this goal quickly squashed them.

10.   For good measure, the Leafs scored another power-play goal late in the game. Like the first two, it stemmed from a Tavares faceoff win. Marner collected it up top, threw a shot on net with Knies right in front, Matthews won the race to the rebound, and Knies banged it home. The Leafs’ power play was clearly dangerous anytime they were set up, but their entries were otherwise a disaster. Tavares won three faceoffs, and they scored on all three.

Otherwise, the rest of the period was relatively stress-free for a playoff game until the final few minutes.

First off, I should note I did not like Greig crashing into Stolarz on a shorthanded chance without an immediate response from the Leafs. Stolarz felt it, and it should have been addressed. Other than that incident, the Leafs stood up for themselves in the final minute as the Senators tried to get silly. The Leafs hung in there.

The Senators got waxed in this game, and they knew it. They will try to carry it over to the next game, but the Leafs have to like the situation overall. Shot attempts were 64-36 for the Senators at five-on-five, and the Sens can take solace in that if they want to, but the Leafs clearly relaxed after they built a big lead, and Ottawa threw a ton of junk to the net.

Matthews played just 18:42 in Game 1, Tanev just 18:06, and McCabe just 19:36. In fact, not a single Leafs defenseman played 20 minutes (McCabe led them in ice time). The Leafs just rolled the minutes with a big lead. At forward, Robertson played a team-low 11 minutes (still a pretty good number), while Knies led the team with 22:29.

Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Heat Map: 5v5 Shot Attempts

Game Highlights w/ Joe Bowen & Jim Ralph

 

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