Toronto Maple Leafs right wing Mitch Marner scores a goal and celebrates with defensemen Chris Tanev and Jake McCabe against the Florida Panthers during the third period in Game 2.Nick Turchiaro/Reuters
Midway through the second period, Leafs pest Scott Laughton got carried away. Instead of letting Florida’s Evan Rodrigues skate freely toward the side boards, Laughton drove him straight into them.
Rodrigues managed to get his hands up, but on replay you could still see his head snap to the side as it hit the glass at speed.
Rodrigues went down and stayed down. A fight ensued. When several penalties were assessed, there was a strange one in their midst – embellishing on Rodrigues.
Rodrigues couldn’t serve it because he was back in the dressing room being assessed for a concussion.
Per the rule book, embellishing “makes the impression of a foul look more serious than it truly was.”
I’m not sure how running into a hard object head first can be faked, but apparently Rodrigues had done it. He’s got a couple of more years left before he has to start looking for a second career. At that point, Hollywood stuntmen beware.
And that was the game. It ended 4-3 Toronto.
A lot of Leafs were good on Wednesday. Fill-in goalie Joseph Woll was tremendous. Roster gamble Max Pacioretty was even better. Max Domi made only good decisions for a change. But the real difference maker was the officiating crew.
There is a pervasive feeling in Toronto that the league and, by extension, it’s on-ice representatives in white and black, hate the Maple Leafs. Why? Who knows.
They must hate money, too, and attention, and not looking like they can’t bring their best product to market. It’s a bit like saying Apple secretly hates the iPhone, and actually wants people talking about the 3-D goggles that no one owns.
On Wednesday, the Rodrigues call showed the truth of it. Maybe it’s just not that easy to interpret reality when its happening around you in 360 degrees at 20 or 30 kph.
The difference was that at the moment of greatest peril, an officiating howler benefited hockey’s sad sackingest club.
Though the score was tied 2-2 when it happened, Florida had to that point looked like Florida. They were slowly choking the game off, pinning the Leafs in their own end. Everything about them looked precise.
But once they got jobbed on the Rodrigues call, the Panthers came undone. They spent a lot of the rest of that period chasing Laughton around, trying to goad him into a fight. Their calm turned to freneticism.
The game remained tight, but Florida could not stop leaking from the back. And that was the difference. Florida had many chances, and got too few. The Leafs had a few, and took them all.
Asked later if the Rodrigues call had been explained to him, Florida coach Paul Maurice said, “No,” and left it at that. He never leaves it at that. So things must be very bad.
From the Florida perspective, though down 2-0 to the Leafs, everything has been close. Take the first period of Game 1 off the table, and the Panthers have been the better team on aggregate.
From the Toronto perspective, things are finally going their way. It’s not that they are the better team. Lots of recent teams have been better than their opponents, and still managed to blow it by the end.
For the first time in living memory, the Leafs are the luckier team. Anthony Stolarz gets knocked out, and his replacement, Woll, is even better. Pacioretty turns into Mike Bossy. Marner takes a speculative shot off a bouncing puck from the side boards and it arcs over the goalie’s shoulder.
You make your own luck in the NHL, but still – lucky.
Things are going so well that after scoring that game winner, Mitch Marner, said, “Thanks everyone,” at the end of his post-game presser.
When that guy’s feeling magnanimous in the playoffs, the fabric of reality is beginning to warp.
There is no worse lead in hockey than 2-0 in the playoffs. Even the most disciplined professional starts thinking it’s in the bag – because it should be.
Once you start thinking that, you also think of the opposite. And then it falls apart.
No team is better positioned to take advantage of that mindset than Florida in Florida.
After Wednesday’s loss, they all looked relaxed. Brad Marchand – who was by far the best Florida player on the night – stood there sipping a recovery shake saying, “We’re okay in here,’ like he believed it.
But now things have been simplified for Toronto. Just win one game in Florida. Win one of two and they put Florida into a submission position.
The Leafs are already guaranteed to go further in the playoffs this year – six games into the second round – than they have in twenty years. It’s not yet a success, but it will no longer be a fiasco. In Toronto, that’s what passes for good news.
Now that the Leafs have luck on their side, it’s time to start pressing it. Game 3 is a must-win for the Panthers, which means the Leafs should treat it similarly. You only get so many chances to impose yourselves on a Stanley Cup champion. You need to be lucky to do so.
“Shallow men believe in luck,” according to Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
On the one hand, you take his point. The better team will, by definition, win this series.
But on the other hand, who did Emerson ever play for?