It’s nearly at all times futile to search for “signs” or “omens” in playoff hockey. The subsequent bounce off somebody’s ass doesn’t actually care what occurred earlier than, and apparently, this season, neither will the following name the ref misses however nonetheless manages to go away your D-man maimed, and the opposing ahead an open path to your internet.
But that doesn’t cease followers, particularly tortured ones (if solely in their very own thoughts), from on the lookout for something which may point out a change in fortunes. If you’re a Maple Leafs fan, you’ll drink any type of sand within the desert. And yesterday’s comeback win over the Lightning that gave the Leafs a 2-1 lead within the collection is an particularly tasty little bit of sand.
Make no mistake, the Leafs had been horrible for many of the 79 minutes of Game 3. They had been totally outshot, out-attempted, and out-chanced by the Lightning. Ilya Samsonov got here out extraordinarily jumpy in internet and appeared like he was making an attempt to make three saves without delay. They handled the puck prefer it was some energetic rodent, and their gradual (and getting slower) protection was snowed in by the Lightning for essentially the most half.
The numbers are ugly. At even energy, the Lightning had 65 p.c of the makes an attempt. They had 64.5 p.c of the anticipated targets. They had 63 p.c of the scoring probabilities. In Games 1 and three, the Lightning have feasted on the Maple Leafs’ want for his or her forwards to do nearly every thing. Other than yesterday’s hero Morgan Rielly, the Leafs’ defensive corps can not create sufficient time for themselves to finish a go, a lot much less take part any offensive rush, or possession. The Leafs are depending on their forwards to hold the puck 170 ft or extra to stand up the ice. Especially yesterday, that has performed proper into Tampa’s strangulation 1-1-3 defensive plan.
They shouldn’t be main, however they are
And but… the Leafs lead the collection. They discovered a manner, which isn’t a sentence one ever writes in regards to the Leafs, no less than not in a optimistic vogue. Their star gamers simply pulled them out of it. Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews created a turnover and havoc within the Lightning zone, and ultimately the previous discovered the latter for a tip to attain to offer them a 2-1 lead within the first that would have, and should have, gotten away from them. Ryan O’Reilly tied the game with lower than a minute to go. And Rielly, the one blue-liner on the Leafs who doesn’t seem like he’s skating by poisonous waste, floated within the additional time winner.
Those 4 gamers additionally occur to be Toronto’s main scorers by the primary three video games, the place the Lightning have been extra paced by their depth gamers like Cory Perry, or Anthony Cirelli. Tampa can take coronary heart from that as a result of their stars are prone to chip in in an enormous manner in some unspecified time in the future, however they’re additionally beginning to run just a little brief on time. They can even take heard that within the two video games Victor Hedman has performed, they’ve principally rolled the Leafs other than a 3rd interval in a Game 1 that was already determined. The Leafs have no such participant on their again finish who simply calms issues down.
And but…they lead 2-1. Yes, they had been right here simply final yr. They even led 3-2 final yr and went into additional time with an opportunity to finish it. They didn’t. They had Andrei Vasilevskiy trying just a little shaky then, simply as they do now. But this Lightning workforce, with the exceeding mileage on it with yet one more deep run from final spring added to it, in all probability isn’t as able to as many dominant performances because it as soon as was. It simply wasted one in every of them.
It’s by no means a good suggestion to get on the Leafs bandwagon. It smells and it has a brackish clientele. But it’s nonetheless rolling, which after yesterday, is one thing of a brand new trick.
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