SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Auston Matthews got his first goal of the series to break a scoreless tie in the third period, Joseph Woll stopped 21 shots and the Toronto Maple Leafs kept their season alive by beating the Florida Panthers 2-0 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinal series Friday night.
Game 7 is Sunday night in Toronto. The winner will face Carolina in the East final.
Max Pacioretty added an insurance goal for the Maple Leafs, who improved to 4-2 when facing elimination since the start of the 2023 playoffs.
Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 15 shots for the Panthers, the defending Stanley Cup champions who oddly are only 8-7 in potential closeout games over the last three post-seasons.
Florida coach Paul Maurice is 5-0 in Game 7s, including the final game of last season’s Stanley Cup Final. The Panthers are 3-1 in the ultimate game of a series — 2-0 on the road — while the Maple Leafs have lost each of their last six Game 7s. Of those, four were against Boston and now-Panthers forward Brad Marchand.
It was the 68th game of this season’s playoffs — and only the second that was 0-0 after 40 minutes. The other was Wednesday night, when Edmonton wound up eliminating Vegas with a 1-0 victory in overtime in Game 5 of that Western Conference semifinal series.
Toronto had five goals in Game 1, four more in Game 2 and had three by the early goings of the second period of Game 3. Add it up, and that was 12 in basically the first seven periods of the series.
From there, Toronto had managed basically nothing — until Matthews broke through.
The Toronto captain was 0 for 31 on shots against Florida this season, including the regular season. Bobrovsky had stopped 85 of the last 86 shot attempts he had seen in the series. And the Maple Leafs hadn't had the lead in basically the equivalent of 3 1/2 games — 216 minutes, 30 seconds, to be precise.
But when a pass got away from Florida's Aaron Ekblad, Matthews had a slight opening — and that was all he needed. A low shot skittered along the ice and beat Bobrovsky for a 1-0 lead with 13:40 left.
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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press
