By Jonas Siegel, Joshua Kloke and Chris Johnston
With the Stanley Cup playoffs about to begin, Simon Benoit was sitting at his dressing room stall in Toronto, preparing to play Game 1 against the Ottawa Senators.
How did he feel about his finish to the regular season, when his play seemed to improve?
“What do the numbers say?” said Benoit, smugly. “I don’t care about the season, how the season went — I just feel ready for tonight and the rest doesn’t f—ing matter.
“It’s playoffs. Best time of the year.”
And the time when unlikely heroes emerge — none more unlikely for the Maple Leafs than the 26-year-old who had all of six goals in his NHL career before his point shot beat Linus Ullmark to end Game 3, propelling the Leafs to a 3-0 series lead.
“It’s always great when a guy like that scores,” Leafs coach Craig Berube said afterward.
How unlikely was this Benoit goal? Let us count the ways.
If you go back to the start of his 17-year-old season in the QMJHL, Benoit has played 659 total games and scored 22 times, roughly one for every 30 games. And somehow this was the second consecutive overtime winner he’d factored on, becoming just the seventh defenceman in NHL history to accomplish that feat.
No one was more surprised than Benoit when he found himself sitting in front of a bank of cameras at the postgame podium reserved for stars of the game, or even just 30 minutes before when he found himself getting mauled by white sweaters on the ice.
“I didn’t quite know how to react, to be honest,” said Benoit. “I just lifted both of my arms and didn’t move, and I saw all of those guys coming towards me. A good feeling.”
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GO FURTHER
The Maple Leafs’ most unlikely hero has them on verge of sweeping Battle of Ontario