Toronto Maple Leafs Round One Win
April 29th marks the day a 6,948-day or 19-year drought officially comes to an end. The Toronto Maple Leafs won game six on the road against the Tampa Bay Lightning after going to overtime with a score of 2-1.
After no goals in the first period, Auston Matthews put the first point of the game and the only point of the second period on the scoreboard. The second period was influential to the result of the game's final score. Toronto showed both a strong offensive and defensive performance and a strong performance by goaltender Ilya Samsonov. After playing so well the last three years, it could be assumed that the Lightning just ran out of gas. While the Lightning did not play badly, they were simply outplayed by the Maple Leafs. Even though game six was a low-scoring game, there was never a dull moment from either team.
To break down the statistics of the game, Toronto and Tampa Bay had even amounts of power-play goals, both at zero and four penalty minutes, and 11 giveaways. The Maple Leafs had more hits, blocks, as well as takeaways, while the Lightning led the game in shots on goal and face-off percentage. While you cannot give credit to just a few players for a team's success, a few players put up impressive numbers and showed up to play. Ilya Samsonov, with 171 saves, a .900 save percentage as a result, and just 19 goals against, strong goaltending was an enormous factor for the Maple Leafs to reign victorious over the Tampa Bay Lightning. Other players to give credit to are Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, and Morgan Rielly, the Leafs' top three players in the postseason for points. While these four played with extreme levels of skill, the entire team truly stepped up, showed up, played to win, and proved to be the stronger team.
After 19 long years, the victory of this series is nothing short of deserved for the Toronto Maple Leafs, players, coaching staff, and fans included. They played strongly, and they played for a reason, a good reason at that. Break the curse. The Toronto Maple Leafs will now face the Florida Panthers in round two after their overtime victory against the Boston Bruins.