Two straight overtime victories spurred by Simon Benoit have the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-0 up on the Ottawa Senators.
Game 3 followed a different script from the first two — no early Maple Leaf goals this time, and the Senators took their first lead of the series, with a power-play goal in the second period. However, a calm-and-composed Leafs team answered with a power-play goal of their own to tie it before intermission. An Auston Matthews goal on the first shift of the third period ultimately turned Game 3 into the same closing script as Game 2: a one-goal Leafs lead in the third period.
Like Game 2, the Leafs played strong team defense with the lead but couldn’t get it over the finish line in regulation, this time coming on the first soft goal against of the series on Anthony Stolarz. Just like Game 2, the win came in OT on a play with heavy involvement from Simon Benoit. Off a clean draw win by Auston Matthews, Benoit blasted a shot through traffic to win the game for the Leafs just a couple of minutes into the extra session, leaving the Leafs a game away from their first sweep in 24 years.
Notable Game 3 Performances
The most interesting performance in this game is arguably head coach Craig Berube’s, who managed his lineup with real balance. Not a single forward reached 20 minutes, even though the game bled slightly into overtime. Berube played Matthews/Marner close to 20 minutes, Nylander/Tavares a bit over 17 minutes, Knies at 16.5, and everyone else at forward between 10 and 14 minutes.
On defense, every defender played at least 18 minutes and only one played more than 20:11, Jake McCabe at 21:48. The balance in usage is almost night-and-day from some of the lowlights of the Sheldon Keefe “ride the stars until they drop dead” era and reflects a coach quite comfortable with the depth of his lineup and the roles in which he’s deploying his lines.
The top line of Auston Matthews centering Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies didn’t have the most high-event night in terms of volume of chances for or against while they were on the ice, but they created both of the Leafs’ goals at five-on-five. Shots were 3-3 in 10 minutes of five-on-five time versus the Shane Pinto line, and the goals were 2-0 Leafs. The Marner pass to set up Matthews’ go-ahead goal in the third period/Matthews’ first goal of the series was about as slick as you’ll see from Mitch, who seems comfortable despite the high-stakes nature of this playoff series. In a timely push to start the third period, Marner and Matthews also both won the puck a couple of times earlier during the shift to consolidate possession in the offensive zone. Later, Matthews cleanly won his 13th draw of the night (65%) to set up Benoit’s game-winner in OT.
The second line with Pontus Holmberg next to John Tavares and William Nylander remained intact and fared okay in the territorial sense. Holmberg went on another rush down the wing he wasn’t able to convert, while Nylander went on a breakaway and, strangely, attempted a slapshot that Ullmark easily read and swallowed up. Morgan Rielly coughed the puck up while this group was on the ice, leading to a Dylan Cozens breakaway that Anthony Stolarz was forced to stop, and Nylander took a penalty while shorthanded to set up a lengthy 5v3 that Ottawa scored on. Still, despite some warts, the Nylander/Tavares combo created a handful of good scoring chances for each other and didn’t get caved in or scored on, so it was a passable game overall.
As for the bottom six, it was a quiet night for the Scott Laughton checking line, but they were buried with defensive zone starts. Given the context, coming out near even in shot attempts and not getting scored on was a win.
The new look third line with Max Domi centering Max Pacioretty graded out fairly well in the underlying metrics, with a handful of the team’s better offensive zone shifts in the first two periods of the game coming off of pucks dumped in by this line. They established a heavy forecheck and were a handful at times for the Senators’ defense with the mix of size and speed Bobby McMann, Pacioretty, and Domi brought to the ice. This proved to be a sharp adjustment by Berube with the team in need of the extra physicality and the direct-and-heavy identity from this third line inside a hostile playoff environment on the road. They were also without as much control over the matchups, and the line, for this game anyway, proved more trustworthy than the previous iteration.
On defense, Simon Benoit played the hero in overtime, a moment he will get to remember for the rest of his life, to cap another game where he showed confidence lugging pucks with his feet and getting up in the play as well as plenty of bite in the defensive trenches. Chris Tanev and Jake McCabe shouldered tough minutes again, and this time came out decisively ahead in terms of shots while they were on the ice. Oliver Ekman-Larsson made two beautiful poke-checks on Tim Stützle rushes; OEL is outmatched from a foot-speed standpoint against Stützle’s, but he was positionally on point and read both plays well with a great stick. OEL was excellent in the game and yet technically finished last on the defense in TOI; such is the overall strength of depth on the Leafs’ blue line at the moment. The Leafs conceded only 1.47 expected goals against in ~49 minutes of hockey at 5v5 (per Natural Stat Trick) and just 2.25 expected goals overall.
In net, Anthony Stolarz stopped 18 of 20 shots for a solid .900 SV%. In terms of Goals Saved Above Expected, he came out slightly in the positive, matching the eye test. The Leafs did expose him to some chances, but not all that many. He could do little about the first goal, given it was on a 5v3 with a screen in front. He will want the 2-2 goal back, but Stolarz also made several big saves, including one on Stützle from the slot set up by Drake Batherson and another against an odd-man rush after the tying goal taken by Batherson. Stolarz made enough saves to nail down the win and hold the Senators to two goals for the third straight game. He didn’t need to save Toronto’s bacon by any means, though, as this was a pretty tidy defensive effort in front of him.
Storylines for Game 4
1. Core Four (Five? Six?) sizzling. Looking at the series to date in full, the success of the Leafs has come from their top players. Sure, they’ve gotten goals from a few unlikely places, most notably Simon Benoit and Max Domi’s overtime goals. However, the heavy lifting has come from the core players, whether you want to call it the old-fashioned “Core Four” of Marner, Matthews, Nylander, and Tavares, or those players plus Rielly (the occasionally-referenced fifth member of the core) or even Knies, who is now a core piece and a staple of the five-forward power play. That nucleus of talent has made the Maple Leafs an elite regular-season team for years, and in this series, they are the reason why Toronto is one game from the second round.
Those six players have combined to score nine of Toronto’s 12 goals in the series, although funny enough, those nine goals include neither of the team’s overtime markers in the series. With Matthews tallying in Game 3, all six players have at least one goal, with Rielly, Knies, and Tavares each potting two. For all the talk of needing to create depth scoring, the story of this roster has remained the same since Marner and Matthews exited their entry-level contracts and signed the big extensions: for the Maple Leafs to have playoff success, their stars have to outshine the stars of the other teams. They don’t have the depth (and never will) to win several games in the playoffs when their stars are consistently mediocre, and in this series, they haven’t been. They have been stars.
Especially when we compare them to Ottawa. Those top six players for the Leafs have far outshone the top players for the Senators, whoever you want to include in that definition for the Sens — presumably, Stützle, Tkachuk, Batherson, Cozens, Giroux, and either Sanderson or Chabot. It should be obvious that the Leafs’ stars would shine brighter; the Senators do not have the star power of the Maple Leafs on paper, but neither did Columbus in 2020 or Montreal in 2021, and it didn’t matter in those series. Marner/Matthews spent the Montreal series locked up by Philip Danault, scoring one goal combined. In this series, they’ve been delivering the goods (as they did against Tampa in 2023).
2. A more stable Leafs lineup. Berube swapped Max Pacioretty into the lineup for Nick Robertson in Game 3, a decision that left Pontus Holmberg at 2LW and dropped Pacioretty on the third line, leaving Max Domi at center. It worked out in Game 3, as mentioned. Holmberg is complementing Tavares/Nylander effectively in some ways, but we’re also seeing the downside of a player with Holmberg’s finishing (in)ability playing alongside $22.5 million of offensive talent. There may be opportunities to spot Pacioretty or McMann into that second line — both of those combinations have past chemistry/familiarity — if the Leafs find themselves in need of offense.
Meanwhile, the top line remains etched in stone, and the Scott Laughton-led checking line is providing enough in its role to remain intact. It may not be a 100% perfect lineup, but it does feel like there are enough complementary fits, chemistry, and clearly-defined roles on each line that they can keep rolling into Game 4 as is.
3. How will Game 4 be refereed? Most Maple Leaf fans weren’t pleased with the way Game 3 was called by the referee crew. They are justified in that belief.
The Ottawa Senators’ two best forwards both flopped and were rewarded handsomely for it; Brady Tkachuk drew a penalty early in the game with a whiplash head-snap on minimal contact (with Tim Stützle diving in the background himself) before Stützle crossed in front of Steven Lorentz and dove through the air to sell another trip. With under two minutes to go in regulation, Mitch Marner cut to the slot and got hacked down on as blatant of a trip as you’ll find. It’s a late-game situation with a tied score, but a scoring chance was developing, and it was egregious in light of the standard of calls earlier in the game.
Overall, the balance of calls favoured Ottawa in Game 3, and the referees were eager to dole out matching roughing calls. They gave out a matching roughing to Brandon Carlo and David Perron just a few minutes into the game, and they did it again in the early second period with Simon Benoit and Shane Pinto. There was also a fairly soft cross-check call on Matthew Knies during the closing part of the first period while the Leafs were on a power play. The Zebras then went the other way in the third period, letting the two teams play, but it was difficult to get into the flow of the game in the first 40 minutes with so many minor penalties handed out and the game constantly flipping to 4v4 or 5v4.
Will the referees go with a tight whistle early or in Game 4, or will they let the teams play a little more? Will they take notice of the flopping from Stützle in Game 3, in particular? Referees don’t (or at least shouldn’t) want to be embarrassed/duped by theatrics. It was rewarded in this game, so we know more of it is coming in Game 4.
4. Can the Leafs finish off a third period? They don’t have to change much. The Leafs held a one-goal cushion in the third period of both of the last two games and failed to win either game in regulation, yet in neither case could we poke holes in the defensive effort.
In Game 2, they lost the 2-1 lead because of one self-inflicted/unforced turnover leading to a deflection goal on a low-percentage point shot. In Game 3, Stolarz conceded his first softie of the series. You can knock Max Domi a bit for getting deked around by Tyler Kleven, leading to a clean breakout for Ottawa that eventually turned it into a possession entry with numbers. At the end of the day, though, the shot that beat Stolarz was from far out with no screen, and it beat him shortside. You expect and demand Stolarz to make the save, and it didn’t lie at the feet of the team defense.
There was a ton to like about the way the Leafs were salting away the game in both third periods. Ottawa had absolutely nothing going on; they were struggling to traverse the neutral zone cleanly and were kept completely to the perimeter of the offensive zone. Few shots even made it to Anthony Stolarz in either period, and the Leafs made quick clears when they recovered possession. It was textbook defensive hockey with a third-period lead, and it’s unlucky that the Maple Leafs haven’t been rewarded with a regulation win in either case.
Should they wind up in that situation one more time in Game 4, we will see if the Leafs can A) find their lock-down defensive A-Game yet again, and B) finally get rewarded for it in regulation.
5. Ottawa’s last chance. Put simply, the cliche that the fourth win is the hardest to get in a playoff series has some truth to it, although it remains to be seen how an inexperienced Senators team will handle two straight OT heartbreakers that leave them in a desolate spot. Surely, in front of their home crowd in their first playoff appearance since 2017, they’ll leave it all out there in hopes of salvaging at least a game. The Leafs conceded too much zone-time pressure during the Senators’ opening push of Game 3, but they also kept Grade-A scoring chances to a minimum before settling into the game. Can they ease the pressure earlier tonight/actually dictate the start of the game, open the scoring, and really break the Senators’ remaining belief?
