Friday night at the TD Garden, saw the Boston Bruins host the Toronto Maple Leafs for game five in the best of seven series, with the tally at 2-2.
The netminders remained unchanged from the previous four games, Tuukka Rask defending the net for Boston and Frederik Anderson for Toronto. The two netminders had relatively quiet nights though, the penalty boxes also remained quite peaceful.
The first period saw one penalty, Zach Hyman tripping Charlie McAvoy at 17:00 being the only penalty, and with seven shots on goal from Toronto and just six from Boston, the teams headed into the first break 0-0.
Period two had slightly more in it, both teams managing nine shots on goal, but the two netminders stopping all of them kept things 0-0 into break number two. Toronto took another pair of penalties, Patrick Marleau hooking against David Krejci, and Mitchell Marner for delay of game after he put the puck over the glass. Boston failing to make the most of these three power plays, after converting five of the eleven they had in the first four games.
At 07:14 of the third, Marcus Johansson sat the only Boston penalty of the night for too many men on the ice. Toronto did not manage to convert this in to a goal.
Shortly after though, Toronto did manage to break the deadlock, Kasperi Kapanen passing the puck to Auston Matthews, who knocked it back to Jake Muzzin at the blue line. Muzzin faked a shot, then took a couple of steps towards goal, pulling the defence towards him, but a quick pass to Matthews who had got himself in to space on the far side of the goal saw Matthews with a one timer in to the back of the net.
“We have to regroup, move on and get ready for Game 6 on Sunday,” Matthews said. “We have an opportunity to close out the series in our rink. We’re excited. We have to be ready to go, and we know the atmosphere is going to be amazing there. So we’re looking forward to it.”
Two minutes later, a turnover in front of the Toronto goal saw Morgan Rielly streak the length of the ice, passing to Andreas Johnsson on his left. As Rielly headed towards the net, most people focused on him, but Kapanen had come in to the Boston zone on the right wing. Johnsson’s quick pass gave Kapanen the chance to make the score 2-0.
“We’ve had better games,” Bruins forward Brad Marchand said. “I don’t think either team was great, but it was the difference of one play. [The] game is over now, worry about the next one.”
Boston pulled Rask with just over two minutes left in the game, really putting the pressure on the Toronto net, passing the puck around the Toronto zone. Torey Krug passed to David Pastrnak, who sent the puck through traffic to David Krejci. Krejci knocked the puck past Anderson for a late consolation goal, but with just 44 seconds left in the game, there was not enough in it for Boston to push to overtime and the game finished 2-1.
“Total team victory for sure. Guys were battling. We wanted this one. It took the full 60 to get it done, but we got it done,” the Maple Leafs’ Zach Hyman said.
[WATCH: All Maple Leafs vs. Bruins Game 5 highlights | Complete series coverage]
Rask faced 27 shots allowing two goals, with Anderson stopping 28 of the 29 against him.
Game 6 will take place at Scotiabank Arena on Sunday.
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