May 16th, 2025, 10:59pm
Sunrise, Fla. — The Auston Matthews have not played against Florida in more than a year. He ended the drought – and may have saved Toronto’s season as well.
Matthews scored the first goal of the series to beat a scoreless tie in the third term, with Joseph Wal stopping 22 shots and the Toronto Maple Leafs living the season by beating the Florida Panthers 2-0 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Series Series on Friday.
“A mere brave and brave victory,” Matthews said.
Game 7 is a Sunday night in Toronto. The winner will face Carolina in the East Final.
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“We played a simple game tonight,” Leafs coach Craig Belbe said.
It’s simple but effective. Toronto blocked 31 shots and killed all four more Florida power plays.
Max Pacioretty added insurance targets to the Maple Leafs, which have improved to 4-2 when faced exclusion since the start of the 2023 playoffs.
Sergei Bobrovsky has stopped 15 shots for the Panthers, the defending Stanley Cup champions, who are only 8-7 in potential close-out games over the past three postseasons.
“You’ll win, you learn,” Panthers captain Alexander Barkov said. “We learned tonight.”
Florida coach Paul Maurice is 5-0 in Game 7, including last season’s Stanley Cup final. The Panthers are always 3-1 in the ultimate game of the series (2-0 on the road), with the Maple Leaf losing each of the last six games seven. Of these, four were against Boston, and were now heading forward to Brad Marchand.
“We’re not going to show you the videos of these Game 7,” Maurice said. “We’ll be looking at the game tonight and see where we can get better.”
This was the 68th game of the playoffs this season and the second game, 0-0 after 40 minutes. The other was Wednesday night. Edmonton eliminated Vegas with a 1-0 victory in overtime in Game 5 of its Western Conference semi-final series.
Toronto had five goals in Game 1, four more in Game 2, and three goals early in Game 3’s second period.
From there, Toronto essentially got nothing – until Matthews broke through.
The Toronto captain was 31-0 on shots against Florida this season, including in the regular season. Bobrovsky stopped 85 of the last 86 shot attempts he saw in the series. And the Maple Leafs didn’t have a lead that was basically equivalent to 3½ games – 216 minutes and 30 seconds to be exact.
However, when the pass left Florida’s Aaron Eckblad, Matthews had a slight opening. A low shot skittered along the ice, beating Bobrovski for a 1-0 lead with 13:40 left.
“From top to bottom, that’s a big win,” Matthews said. “We got it.”
