Brad Marchand‘s two goals and three points helped the Boston Bruins avoid elimination and send their first round series back home, knotted at three games each with the Maple Leafs on Sunday afternoon in Toronto.
“When the season is on the line, you want to play hard, you want to leave it all out there,” Marchand said. “Sometimes it bounces your way, sometimes it doesn’t. Luckily today it bounced our way. Again, though, we’re fighting for our season now, next game, we don’t know how it’s going to play out, but we’re going to have fun doing it.”
Tuukka Rask made 22 saves to get the win in Game 6.
Morgan Rielly and Auston Matthews scored for Toronto who were looking to move on to the second round and avoid a trip back to Boston where the Bruins have had a penchant for winning this season.
“I thought we were really ready, we were jumping big time,” Toronto coach Mike Babcock said. “But then, as soon as we had a little adversity and they scored twice, we didn’t recover. I don’t know if that’s the emotions got the better of us, but we couldn’t get it back in check. To say we weren’t ready, that would be totally wrong.”
Jake DeBrusk and Torey Krug also scored for Boston.
“To me this is the best we’ve played,” Boston head coach Bruce Cassidy said. “We kind of knew we had to step up. Today was more the way we wanted to play, we wanted to be aggressive keeping pucks alive with our defensemen. I thought we were attacking the net better, just more overall of our identity. Obviously we were desperate, but this is the kind of thing we talked about on Saturday about trying to hit our ceiling.”
Game 7 is Tuesday night in Boston.
[WATCH: All Bruins vs. Maple Leafs Game 6 highlights | Complete series coverage]
Frederik Andersen made 37 saves in the loss.
“They came out playing well,” Rielly said. “I thought we matched it. Obviously, them getting two on the power play is not what we wanted. It’s important that we get that sorted out on the penalty kill.”
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