SIMMONS: Auston Matthews does it all, and more, in Maple Leafs' Game 2 win over Boston (2024)

In the final minute of Auston Matthews’ tour de force, with overtime seemingly looming, with the Boston Bruins buzzing, with Ilya Samsonov unsure of the location of the puck, Matthews calmly slid the disc under his netminder’s pad to kill the play.

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There is no statistic for composure. There is no statistic for assuring victory. There is no statistic, overall, for being the most complete player on the ice in every zone and every way of a playoff victory.

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There is a statistic for this though: The Maple Leafs and the Bruins are tied 1-1 after two games at the TD Garden. This playoff series is now a best-of-five. The blasted Leafs from the series opener battled back in Game 2, and though they made some stunning mistakes, still wound up standing tall enough for a 3-2 hold-your-breath win Monday night over a clearly exasperated Bruins team.

You expect Matthews to score, because that’s what he does better than anyone in hockey. His 70th goal of this season didn’t happen in the regular schedule, but it arrived at a much more opportune time. And he set up two other scores. Three goals for the Leafs, three points for the giant, Matthews.

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On a night the Leafs were losing faceoffs, he was winning his. He did what he usually does, win puck battles, block shots, rarely turn it over, rarely get beat in any situation, and think the way great hockey players are supposed to think when the game and the series — and maybe the season — are all on the line.

The Leafs can make you crazy some nights. You can’t understand why they do what they do, how they do it and when they do it.

They took a bad penalty early — Jake McCabe seems to be the captain of those — and within 26 seconds on the penalty-kill, they trailed 1-0. The Leafs may need to add Matthews to the penalty-kill if only to help one of the weakest elements of their team about now.

There is no official statistic for power-play goals scored after a penalty-killer fails to clear an easy puck. But there probably should be. David Kampf messed up in his own zone, thinking someone else would clear the puck. Someone else named Timothy Liljegren didn’t.

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Suddenly down 1-0, this was the moment the Leafs discovered their playoff resilience. Just 14 seconds after the power-play goal by Morgan Geekie, Max Domi took advantage of Boston having the yips and the game was tied, the goal coming on an assist from Matthews.

The period should have ended 1-1 as the Leafs can be a strange back-and-forth team. There was a last-minute faceoff in the Toronto end, after Samsonov failed to move the puck to one of his defencemen, after the D-to-D pass from Liljegren to Joel Edmundson didn’t connect, and before Simon Benoit chased high in his zone when he shouldn’t have. It ended with Toronto trailing 2-1 after the Benoit chase and Mitch Marner failing to realize that was David Pastrnak wide open not far from him. Recognizing situations. It’s an enormous skill in playoff hockey. Sometimes the Leafs seem to forget who and what they are.

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Give Matthews and the club credit: They didn’t melt after the last-second goal. And that has been something about the Sheldon Keefe Leafs teams that has been hard to explain. Why does the club seem so unstructured when it needs to be the opposite in the final minutes of games and periods? Why?

But almost everything great that happened in Game 2 came back to Matthews. Sometimes the Leafs want to do nothing but pass to Matthews, no matter what the circ*mstances. Sometimes, Domi and Tyler Bertuzzi, the wingers, defer to Matthews in every situation. Bertuzzi had an excellent scoring opportunity early in the game, but instead of taking the puck to the net, he looked and passed to his completely covered centreman.

On other nights and maybe in other years, the Leafs would have found a way to lose Game 2. They had a goal by Bertuzzi called back on a high stick. They gave up the inexplicable last-minute goal in the first period. Nick Robertson didn’t score on a superb chance in the third, when starting goaltender Linus Ullmark made a spectacular save. They were short-handed in the final minutes of the third.

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On other nights, and other years, this would have been defeat. That is the Toronto story, isn’t it? How close they were. How they almost did it. How they should have won.

Boston coach Jim Montgomery, taking a page from the John Schneider book of playoff decisions, started the wrong goaltender, even though Ullmark had a decent game. The Leafs lost 5-1 in Game 1 with Jeremy Swayman in goal. That win came after the late-season 4-1 wins against the Leafs with, yep, Swayman in goal. Add that up and it’s Boston 13, Toronto 3.

Montgomery cost the Bruins last year with his failure to recognize what was happening in goal. On Monday night, he made a poor choice. You don’t switch goalies after a 5-1 win in Game 1. You don’t switch goalies after 13-3 in three straight. You just don’t.

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The Leafs had to feel more relaxed with Ullmark playing, if only because of recency bias. Matthews looked unstoppable on the breakaway that won Toronto Game 2. He was a giant, the Bruins were occasionally sloppy and their coach tripped over himself by over thinking the obvious.

And now, it’s on to Game 3. And we know this much: Starting for the Leafs at centre, as he should, will be Auston Matthews. Sheldon Keefe won’t be a Jim Montgomery and make that mistake, will he?

ssimmons@postmedia.com
twitter.com/simmonssteve

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