Outplayed and outshot, the Leafs somehow outlasted the Lightning in Game 3 – largely thanks to some of their gritty new...
Brayden Point stood up for a few anguished strides and fell back down, writhing. Morgan Rielly lay prone as Nikita Kucherov buried a stick in his back. Steven Stamkos and Auston Matthews waltzed for a few bars before crashing to the ice. Tanner Jeannot and the entire Lightning benched smiled and hurled obscenities at Luke Schenn, thirsting for violence.
But this rivalry went nuclear in the third period of Game 3 Saturday when Rielly drilled Point into the boards in Toronto’s zone. Rielly was initially assessed a five-minute major for boarding, but it was correctly negated upon a review. Point simply lost the puck battle with Rielly, who hit him clean on the shoulder.
Seemingly fed up with team’s streak of first-round playoff exists and the reputation that teams can push around the Leafs’ stars, Dubas eschewed the spreadsheet-friendly team construction to collect blunt instruments, acquiring Schenn, McCabe, Noel Acciari and Sam Lafferty, not to mention upping the grit and experience factor with Ryan O’Reilly.
The question now is: are we seeing a turning of the tide, in which the Leafs are finding a way to handle themselves in situations where they’d normally be bullied out of the building?
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