After hours of sweating and anxiously pacing back and forth, worrying about the future of the Toronto Maple Leafs thanks to the complete pile of garbage they served up for Game 5, they turned a corner and put in their most complete effort to win Game 6 and force an all-deciding final game of the series against the Florida Panthers.
To take this final game and win the series to move on to their first Eastern Conference Finals since 2002, the Maple Leafs will need to continue one specific trend that propelled them to winning Friday night: Smart defensive plays that almost immediately turn into scoring chances.
For instance, on the game-opening goal scored by captain Auston Matthews, we saw Steven Lorentz make a play with a very good stick to disrupt Sam Reinhart's possession and be able to compete a full line change. Because of this, Matthews's line was able to get on the ice. Gustav Forsling made a bad pass as the Panthers attempted their breakout and Mitch Marner was able to beat Aaron Ekblad in a race to that loose puck.
Marner protected the puck just enough to lay it off to a streaking Matthews as the captain entered the zone and just ripped his shot under Forsling's stick. All of that in a play with multiple connecting joints boils down to being able to rattle Panthers initial possession and real smart, defensively minded plays to then take advantage and score.
A perfect team-wide effort with no time or plays wasted. Every single skating stride and stick play contributed to this all-important goal.
But it wasn't just the first goal where defense turned into offense. For the second from Max Pacioretty, as boring as it sounds, it all started with extremely good defensive zone coverage coming off a line change by Toronto.
With the Panthers going full force up the ice with four skaters entering the zone, the Leafs immediately set up, blocked out passing lanes, disrupted Florida routes and the puck carrier in Nate Schmidt, was forced to just shoot an arrant attempt towards Joseph Woll. But, because of how good Leafs sticks were, Oliver Ekman-Larsson stopped the shot just before it left Schmidt's stick, the puck deflected to the other side of the ice and Max Domi was able to pounce on the loose possession.
Domi was able to get to that puck as someone not playing tight defense, but also no Panther was able to recover possession because of how tight the Leafs were playing them in Toronto's zone. Domi sends Bobby McMann up the ice and it's a pretty simple one-touch goal for playoff performer Pacioretty.
All of this is needed once again in Game 7. Quick, fast-acting plays from the Leafs that can spring a forward up the ice with ease because the Panthers were either locked in the offensive zone or committed way to hard to a scoring chance that Toronto easily snuffed out.
The Leafs are capable of doing this, but they just need to do it again and probably multiple times to come out of Game 7 victorious.