In Toronto, the Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins on Friday night, 5-2, to set them up for a Stanley Cup Playoff first round series with the Tampa Bay Lightning, who defeated the New Yorek Islanders, 6-4, on Friday.
“It’s a huge challenge for us,” Toronto’s Jason Spezza said. “Exactly what we want, exactly what we need. We have a lot of respect for that team what they’ve done the last couple years. It’s going to be a heck of a series.”
William Nylander hit for a double for the Leafs.
Toronto finished the regular season at 54-21-7.
“The main objective tonight was to get through the game healthy and I believe we have so from that end, it was a successful night,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said. “We’ve got 82 games in the books here now and we get to play for real.
“It’s a bizarre game to coach, to be honest. It’s a tough one. Your bench is weird, you’ve got guys playing in all different spots. You’re trying to do well in the game, you’re trying not to use guys too much. I was monitoring ice time more than I was monitoring the play on the ice.”
Boston faces the Carolina Hurricanes in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“We expect Carolina to be a difficult opponent,” Boston coach Bruce Cassidy said. “They press, they’re a great skating team, they check well. But we feel we can do the same things, so it should be a great series.
“A little bit is puck management and playing behind them because they like to press up and then winning some races. You don’t have to win them all, but you have to win your share and you’ve got to defend well against them.”
Erik Kallgren made 24 saves in the Toronto win.
Jake DeBrusk and Trent Frederic were the Bruins strikers.
“We love our lineup, we love everyone we have in that locker room, even guys who are out of the lineup,” Boston’s Charlie Coyle said. “If there’s injuries or whatever happens, you never know what’s going to happen in the playoffs. We have guys come in, step up and step right in and make an impact, and that’s what we need. That’s what good teams have. We have a lot of depth that way. We’re really confident and we’re just itching to get going.”
Ilya Mikheyev and Nicholas Abruzzese had goals for the Maple Leafs.
“It felt really good,” Abruzzese said. “(I) had some chances in the past couple of games. I’ve felt better on the ice, so it was nice to have that one go in.”
Pierre Engvall hit an empty net for the 5-2 final.
“I feel good about where we are at,” Spezza said. “Any time we’ve faced adversity this year, we’ve been able to figure out what we’re doing wrong and rally around it and figure out our game in short order, and that’s why we’ve had a good regular season. (In) playoffs, it’s important because there’s not a whole lot of momentum from game to game so it’s important to have that mindset and we’ve been training ourselves that way all season not letting the losses get to us and not getting too high with the wins either, so I think that sets us up well for playoffs.”
Jeremy Swayman made 22 saves in the Boston loss.
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