Toronto Maple Leafs' Matthew Knies scores a goal on Ottawa Senators' goaltender Linus Ullmark as Artem Zub tries to defend during third period NHL playoff action in Toronto, on April 20.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
In the buildup to the Battle of Ontario, a lot of talk surrounded the ability of the Ottawa Senators to draw penalties, a category in which they led the entire NHL during the regular season.
Heading into Tuesday’s Game 2, the skate is well and truly on the other foot.
Toronto managed to draw 15 penalties to Ottawa’s nine in Sunday’s opener, a turn of events that gave its power play more than enough opportunities to take the game away from the Senators in a 6-2 victory.
Despite the presence of well-known agitators like Ridly Greig and captain Brady Tkachuk, who both have a history of getting under opponents’ skin, the Maple Leafs maintained their discipline and retaliated where it really hurts – on the scoreboard.
In converting three of their six chances with the man advantage, the Leafs not only scored a trio of power-play goals in a playoff game for the first time in 26 years, but they also blew away any lingering cobwebs from last year’s power outage. Back then, the unit managed just one goal from 21 opportunities during their seven-game first-round elimination against the Boston Bruins.
“It’s obviously a great start,” said winger Matthew Knies, who scored the third of the three. “I think special teams are going to be a very important part of the playoffs. I feel like the people that win [the Stanley Cup] at the end of the year are usually the ones that have the best special teams.
“So it’s a good start but we got to keep it going. It’s just one game so we’ve got to kind of forget about that one and keep moving forward.”
Just as encouraging was the aggressive way that the Leafs set about making the Senators pay for their transgressions. Toronto, which harnesses its top five forwards together on the first power-play unit, scored its first power-play goal – through John Tavares - just nine seconds after Tim Stutzle took the first penalty of the game at the start of the second period.
It was a similar story after Adam Gaudette took another with Greig already in the box, with William Nylander scoring three seconds after the five-on-three situation was established. And it was much the same for Knies in the third period, with the winger finding the net eight seconds after Drake Batherson had landed in the penalty box for cross-checking.
While Nylander’s goal was certainly a case of working with what the defence gave him, with the Senators inadvertently opening up a channel toward Linus Ullmark’s net, Knies said that the team’s quick-strike strategy was both tactical as well as situational.
“I think a little bit of both,” he said. “Obviously, when you get it up top [near the blue line], I think we want to kind of catch them off guard, catch them out of position, and try to get it towards the net as early as possible.”
Whether it was Knies or Tavares in front of the net, screening Ullmark and looking for tips and rebounds down low – a position from which both scored in the game – captain Auston Matthews admits both present unique matchup problems for the opposition.
“Either guy, I think, just being able to score in different ways,” Matthews said. “It’s not always just one kind of play or one guy that’s scoring, it’s kind of spread out and there’s different ways that we’re able to generate offence and generate looks.”
For head coach Craig Berube, it’s all part of how he wants to play the game at this time of year. The 2019 Stanley Cup-winning coach is all about simplifying the game and playing what he famously terms “low-event hockey.” For him, simply getting pucks to the net is the way to go, rather than agonizingly waiting for the perfect opportunity to arise.
“I think we’re looking to attack right away and that’s a good mentality in my opinion,” he said. “Playoffs, pucks to the net, that’s what you’ve got to think about.”
That theory will be put to the test once again Tuesday night, as the Maple Leafs will look to double their advantage before the series switches to Ottawa.