TAMPA, Fla. –
Brayden Point scored at 18:04 of overtime when the Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-3 on Thursday to force a seventh and deciding game in their first round playoff series.
The winger buried the winner on a rebound between the legs of Leafs goalkeeper Jack Campbell after Alex Killorn fired the first shot.
Ondrej Palat, Anthony Cirelli and Nikita Kucherov had the other goals for the two-time Stanley Cup champions who improved to a stunning 17-0 since 2020 after losing after the season.
Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 30 shots. Point also had an assist on a two-point night.
John Tavares with two and Auston Matthews answered for Torontowhich has not advanced to the second round since 2004 and is now 0-8 in the last five playoffs in elimination games.
Jack Campbell made 31 saves. William Nylander added two assists.
The Leafs will now head home for Game 7 on Saturday, desperate to exorcise the demons of past Spring failures while the weight of history and expectations hang around their necks.
Toronto is 7-2 all-time at home in Game 7 but lost last season at the Scotiabank Arena after squandering a 3-1 lead against the Montreal Canadiens.
Vasilevskiy has won every single one of the contests that make up Tampa’s 17-0 record after losing in the last three playoffs and has a .945 save ratio with five shutouts in 16 wins ahead of Thursday.
The 2019 Vezina Trophy winner and last season’s Conn Smythe Trophy winner wasn’t his usual standout self on the series — his save percentage was .880 through Thursday — but he did enough to get his team into Game 7 that night bring.
Matthews, who was named NHL MVP earlier in the day as one of three finalists for the Hart Trophy, trailed 2-0 in the second half after Cirelli’s peak with Tampa and responded with his fourth of the playoffs 54 seconds later, when he tipped Mark Giordanos point shot.
Tavares then equalized with 33.7 seconds left when Vasilevskiy failed to control the rebound as Jason Spezza swiped at the fluttering puck before bouncing over the goal line.
Toronto‘s captain gave his team, who also fought off a 2-0 deficit at home and won Game 5 by a 4-3 score, the first lead of the evening with 7.8 seconds on the clock as he made his third Place buried so many games in a stunned Amalie Arena.
The Blitz had a two-man advantage of 1:45 midway through the third when David Kampf and Alexander Kerfoot were called off for high-sticking in quick succession, and Kucherov equalized at 9:20 when he fired his second at Campbell.
The Leafs complained that Tampa forward Brayden Point’s chin strap came loose during the sequence, but the goal stood.
Brandon Hagel then had a glorious shot to put Tampa ahead late in the rule, but he narrowly missed the net with Campbell at his mercy.
Toronto had a couple of big chances early in extra time but Vasilevskiy was there to thwart both Kerfoot and Ilya Mikheyev.
After having their doors blown off early in Game 4 en route to a 7-3 loss on the same ice, the Leafs got off to a decent start but went under with the teams playing 4-on-4 late in the first.
Kerfoot made an ill-advised drop pass in the neutral zone to no one. Palat jumped on the turnover and dealt with Campbell before firing his third of the playoffs under Campbell’s blocker with 2:22 left in the period.
Tampa got the game’s first power play with 28 seconds remaining on the period, but the Leafs survived and got to the break despite Lightning captain Steven Stamko’s rattling Campbell’s mask on a nasty one-timer.
Vasilevskiy made big stops on Ilya Lyubushkin and Matthews on the rebound early in the second before the Leafs got their first power play.
But it was lightning that knocked a man down as Cirelli picked up the puck after a turnover from Mark Giordano – Torontosecond crucial mistake of the evening – and moved into the offensive zone. Tampa center went head-to-head with Giordano and used a spin-o-rama to create space before firing deep at Campbell at 10:46 for his first of the series.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on May 12, 2022.
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