John Tavares registered his first playoff hat trick as the Toronto Maple Leafs responded in impressive fashion off a disastrous Game 1 with an emphatic 7-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday to even their first-round playoff series 1-1.
Mitch Marner scored twice and set up another, while William Nylander, with a goal and an assist, and Zach Aston-Reese provided the rest of the offence for Toronto.
After the Leafs survived two Lightning power plays - Tampa scored four times on the man advantage in Game 1 - thanks to Samsonov and some desperate shot blocks, Tavares made it 2-0 at 12:45 when he took a pass from Rielly and fired through a screen on his team's fourth effort on target. Toronto, which lost to Tampa in a tight first-round series last spring and hasn't advanced in the post-season since 2004, continued to push in the second with a couple of terrific shifts.
Toronto's fourth line got in on the action when Aston-Reese banged home a loose puck at 15:52 before Marner added his second on a shot that glanced off a Lightning player in front of Vasilevskiy with 1:58 left in the period as fans ironically chanted the 2019 Vezina Trophy winner's name.
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