Maple Leaf forward Max Domi, centre, celebrates his overtime winning goal against the Ottawa Senators in Game 2 of the First Round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Scotiabank Arena on April 22, in Toronto.Claus Andersen/Getty Images
The full extent of the damage won’t be known until the end of the series, but the ripple effect from Max Domi’s overtime goal reached across both sporting and cultural divides in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Global soccer icon David Beckham, who has almost 60 times as many Instagram followers as the Toronto Maple Leafs’ account, posted an image of the Leafs man of the moment with the words “Yesssss Max,” while actor Mark Wahlberg, who has 31 million IG followers of his own, reposted video footage of the goal against the Ottawa Senators.
Both men, who know Max through business connections with his father, Tie, may or may not be hockey fans, but they have both shown a flair for the dramatic in their own professions. The younger Domi’s first career OT goal was certainly that.
Not only did it build on his unique family legacy with the Original Six club – coming 21 years after Tie also scored a playoff game winner for the Leafs against the Sens – it went a long way to sparing the home side’s blushes. Toronto had been in the ascendancy – on the scoreboard at least – for almost the entire contest until Adam Gaudette’s game-tying goal spoiled the party with barely five minutes remaining.
But Domi’s tenure-defining shift ensured that Toronto grabbed a 2-0 series lead for the first time since the 2002 postseason against the New York Islanders. The Leafs now head to Ottawa for Games 3 and 4 on Thursday and Saturday, respectively.
Sitting two wins away from just a second series win in 21 years, the players know that the battle only gets harder from here. The trio of former Panthers on the Toronto roster can certainly relate to that, having been up 2-0 – and then 3-0 – in last year’s Stanley Cup final, only to see the Edmonton Oilers rattle off three straight victories to force a decisive Game 7.
“I think it helps going through what we went through last year,” said Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who ended up earning his first Stanley Cup ring a year ago. “ … I try to help the guys out in this room in whatever way I can.”
Unlike in Game 1, when Ottawa’s lack of discipline opened the door for Toronto’s power play to put the game out of reach, the Senators thoroughly outplayed the Leafs in the second period on Tuesday night. As a result, a game that seemed totally in Toronto’s control after the first period was left hanging in the balance for the next 43 minutes and 19 seconds, before Domi settled the contest in the Leafs’ favour.
“We can be better here,” said head coach Craig Berube on Wednesday. “Instead of just, we’re up 2-0, just hang on to the lead almost, that kind of mentality, we got to keep attacking. We got to keep making plays and keep putting the pressure on them.”
The Leafs will almost certainly have to be better. Despite Ottawa’s relative playoff inexperience, with more than 10 players in its lineup skating in their first playoff games, those players are gaining seasoning every night. An influential leader like Brady Tkachuk, who scored his first playoff goal Tuesday, seems to be growing in stature by the game.
“You’re not going to play your best every single night,” said Steven Lorentz, who won a Stanley Cup alongside Ekman-Larsson last year. “There’s going to be stretches where you’re hemmed in, or you don’t have all the momentum and that stuff’s going to happen. It’s hopefully a long playoff run, and there’s a lot of things you can learn to take away.”
One of those take-aways seems to be the importance of blocking shots. Though the Leafs have been outgunned in both games – with Ottawa enjoying a 61-45 edge in shots on goal – the Toronto players have also been pressed into action to prevent shots getting through to Anthony Stolarz. And the star players haven’t been excepted from the responsibility either, as Berube demands a total team effort on that front.
Case in point, the Leafs blocked 32 shots to the Senators’ six in Tuesday’s Game 2, with Auston Matthews leading the way with four, while Mitch Marner, John Tavares and Morgan Rielly chipped in with three each.
“Well, you got to do that, that’s part of playoffs,” Berube said. “And everybody’s got to do it. It’s highly important. I can look back on playoff teams, and look at the stats and all that, and if you look at teams that were successful, they blocked a lot of shots.”