In a normal world, the pressure would be on the Lightning, but this is not a normal world.
Updated at 0:08
By scoring the winning goal 18 min 4 s into overtime on Thursday night in Tampa, Brayden Point made sure of two things: to force the presentation of a seventh game… and also, to put all the pressure on the shoulders of the Maples Leafs.
Because that’s what it’s all about: the world of the Toronto Leafs, where nothing is normal, let alone a Stanley Cup parade, an event that hasn’t happened there since the launch of the classic Sgt. Pepper’s of the Beatles, somewhere in the year 1967.
Also, in a normal world, most NHL teams win playoffs once in a while, something the Leafs haven’t been able to do since… the spring of 2004.
It’s a bit of all that Brayden Point was able to do on Thursday evening: the winning goal, of course, but also, to cast doubt. The Leafs have fabulous players, no doubt about it, but the doubt, this doubt, is it now well embedded in their unconscious? Is, to quote Dave Hilton Junior, the damage “inside the head” at the end of this other painful defeat? Highly possible.
And yet, it was their moment. In fact, it should have been their moment.
When John Tavares scored his second of the game, with eight seconds to go in the second period, we felt something, like a wind of change. After all, late-period goals are the worst, and this time, and finally for them, it felt like the hockey gods were in the Toronto camp.
PHOTO CHRIS O’MEARA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
John Tavares (91)
But no.
It took not one, but two supernatural events to change this reality: a penalty, and then another, two hard blows for the Leafs in a sport where the only possible penalties in the playoffs are usually pucks thrown into the bleachers. Coach Sheldon Keefe yelled his most constructive comments at the referees, but it didn’t work… and Nikita Kucherov took advantage of this five against three to bring the score to 3-3. Brayden Point did the rest.
What does it mean ?
In absolute terms, that means that this series is tied 3-3, and that a seventh game, in Toronto this time, will be necessary. Also, it has already been established that in a seventh game, anything is possible, and that it can go either way. Faced with such a state of affairs, why didn’t the Maple Leafs players give their all before they got there? One wonders.
But there they are.
They are there because they spend too much time in the penalty box, and because discipline, this essential discipline, is obviously a problem for them.
We ask the question: if we take away the bad penalties received by the Maple Leafs since the start of this series, do the Lightning players still play hockey today? Probably not.
But that’s the world of the Toronto Maple Leafs. A dark, complicated world, where nothing is ever simple or ever easy.
Thursday night was another proof.