Bravado is cheap. Belief is hollow.
The brown of the thing is executed. And that is why — how — the Maple Leafs have driven Tampa Bay to playoff death row.
Because, after tipping into a fairly deep hole, an 0-2 rut, they mustered the will and the ferocity to dig out, claw back, up and over.
Because of a captain, John Tavares, who’d been absolutely crucified for the past week.
Because of an enigmatic bundle of talent and befuddlement, William Nylander, who is apparently either loved or loathed. When he came out for his No. 1 star bow and clapped his hands together, it could have been for the suddenly adoring fans, it could have been for himself.
Because Jack Campbell had just enough stoning stones to repel the late, desperate surge that the Lightning brought to an affair that had gone all stunningly bass-ackwards in what felt like the blink of an eye.
Because, as Tavares revealed afterwards, Jason Spezza had addressed the team in the first intermission, when Toronto seemed a long way from finding their way to a W: “We needed to get to another level.”
Verdict on Game 5: Not just a 4-3 win for Toronto, but a resounding address before a jury of their hockey peers. Which includes every skeptical armchair GM, every tremulous fan, every dubious media mook. And everybody who’s watched the Leafs bushwhack themselves in post-seasons recently past.
“It was a hell of a hockey game, hell of an atmosphere,” said Tavares in the immediate thereafter, choosing to not otherwise crow or bury his critics. That wouldn’t be him.
Instead, he shifted the accolades to Auston Matthews, who quite rightly deserved them, as did Mitch Marner: “His whole game is just really, really good.”
And Matthews flipped them right back. “He’s our guy,” he said of the captain.
The assessment from coach Sheldon Keefe: “Two-nothing has become four or five for both teams in the series, so we had to flip the script.”
Yes, the Leafs chase the game again. Chased it all over the ice. Chased it to the penalty box. Chased it on the power play. Chased it with the wind at their back from a wildly energizing hometown crowd.
But this time they caught it.
Tavares and Nylander were dissolved and that worked as a strategy, more or less, except they clicked with most stupendous impact when they found themselves together, with or without the man advantage. Nylander assisted on Tavares’s goal at 3:35 of the second period, to get Toronto on the board with plenty of time left to hornswoggle the outcome.
Nylander and Tavares grabbed the orchestrating assists — Tavares doing all the frenzied work behind the net and then a perfect pass out to Morgan Rielly at the hashmarks, for his second of the playoffs, which drew the Leafs level.
Nylander again — here, there, everywhere, and just as abused as Tavares by the armchair coaches over the past several days — threaded a go-ahead wrister by Andrei Vasilevskiy, who’s had only a vague resemblance to his reigning Conn Smythe and previous Vezina form .
Ryan McDonagh knotted it again at 8:17 of the third on a bit of a botch-up by Marner. But Matthews, being Matthews, restored the lead with the winning goal on a two-on-one with Marner — Marner took the shot, off Vasilevskiy’s pad, rebound came bang onto the stick of Matthews. Just like Marner had planned it that way. You think?
Last line change to shelter Toronto’s scoring brilliants from Tampa’s pernicious checking unit, that worked out, too: Matthews had four shots.
Through the opening 20 minutes, pretty much every tactical thrust by the Leafs was parried by the Bolts, every ostensible advantage blunted, even as Tampa gifted Toronto a bench penalty — a largesse repeated in the second period. So strange to see the reigning and two-time Stanley Cup champions suffering brain cramps like that.
With their victory, the Leafs have thoroughly transformed the landscape of this post-season. No team so far has managed to win two games in a row, but the Leafs have seized the series by their tonsils, the momentum blowing their way.
Item could have tilted that way straight out of the hopper, just over two minutes after puck drop — a moment that might have set the tempo, the trend, for everything that came after: Marner on a breakaway away from the Toronto blue line, nothing between him and the net. But he was at the end of his shift, visibly laboring as he approached Vasilevskiy, a defenseman catching up and hounding him. Marner backhanded the puck just wide of the post.
Not 25 seconds later, though, Toronto caught a break — bench minor to Tampa for too many men on the ice, the Leafs with the best power play this season. Except the best scoring chance happened at the other end, a two-on-one foiled by Rielly.
The Leafs had, as avowed, come out with vim and vinegar. Everybody totally comprehended the significance of this game, what they stood to lose if they botched it. And that’s what it was — a botch — when Steven Stamkos opened the scoring at 5:19, pouncing on a loose puck at the top of the circle on a slapshot that beat Campbell glove side.
But that episode had been a harmless one-on-three coming into the Leafs zone which should not have resulted in any scary shot. Four Leafs, however, backed in and off the play, feet not moving, standing around like statues. Stamkos, trailing the play and arriving late, had all the time he needed to tee up, aim and fire.
For Leafs Nation, hearts sank a bit. In the previous four games, the team that scored first had won each time. No lead had ever switched hands.
The gulch widened when Victor Hedman made it 2-0 on the power play at 6:11, drifting over to his left at the top of the circle and just heaving a shot through traffic. A lesson there for Toronto: get the puck on the damn net and maybe good stuff happens, rather than trying to draw a goal out of a half-dozen passes, looking for the most high percentage angle and trajectory.
Three power plays in that frame and just one shot to show for it.
Little wonder that, by the end of the period, the crowd was screeching: “SHOOT THE PUCK! SHOOT THE PUCK!” They weren’t wrong, the Leafs outshot 14-4 through 20.
Best chance for the home side was Nylander jumping out of the penalty box on a partial breakaway that was snuffed by Vasilevskiy. Fifteen breakaways for Nylander in the regular season, scored on four of them. But not this time.
Tavares, assailed left and right if not by his coach, sparked a furious pushback in the second period, with an adroit deflection of a shot from the point by Nylander on the power play. So they did find some chemistry after all. Certainly that goal enlivened the masses and Campbell did his part with his best save of the night — stoning Nick Paul, who’d stripped the puck from Rielly — to keep Toronto within one.
Then the world unfolded as it should, at least from Toronto’s perspective.
“That’s a big one for us, but there’s still work to be done,” said Matthews of a victory that put Toronto up three games to two, with the series shifting back to Tampa.
The players have spent these last six months insisting they’ve matured, the scarring of playoffs past rendering their skin tougher, their psyche firmer, their collective will deeper.
On this night, they proved it.
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