Morgan Rielly scored at 19:15 of overtime and Ilya Samsonov made 36 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs came back from a goal down late in the third period Saturday to defeat the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-3 and take a 2-1 lead in their first-round playoff series.
The defenceman fired a shot from the side boards that floated past the ear of Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevsky before getting mobbed by teammates.
Toronto fell to the Lightning in a tight, seven-game series last spring at the same stage of the playoffs. Tampa, which tilted the ice heavily earlier in the period on an under-siege Samsonov, appeared to go up by two on a power play off a strange sequence where the puck popped in front, but the officials ruled the Toronto netminder had it frozen before Brayden Point poked it home.
Toronto, which lost Game 6 in the same building last spring, had a two-minute power play when the dust settled, but were unable to capitalize with Matthews, Rielly and O'Reilly all in the box.Matthews, Stamkos, O'Reilly and Tampa's Nikita Kucherov all missed nearly nine minutes of action because of the fighting majors and an extended stretch without a whistle.
Looking to advance in the post-season for the first time since 2004, the Leafs opened the scoring at 3:24 of the first when Acciari scored on a 3-on-2 rush off a feed from Knies.
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