BOSTON — Max Domi kept the puck in the Toronto defensive zone, waiting for Auston Matthews to make his move. Like a quarterback spotting an open receiver, Domi sent the puck sailing over the neutral zone and hit Matthews in stride.
In a single fluid movement, the NHL’s leading goal-scorer caught the puck with his left hand and dropped it in front of his stick, then skated in on Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark and defeated him to break a third-period tie.
“An excellent pass to find Auston in the way that he did,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said on Monday night after the Maple Leafs came from behind 1-0 and 2-1 to defeat Boston 3-2 and even their first-round playoff series at one game each. “That’s impressive the way those guys connected.”
Matthews scored a goal and made two assists and Domi also scored for Toronto, which ended an eight-game losing streak against Boston over 534 days dating back to November 2022. Ilya Samsonov stopped 27 shots and John Tavares also scored for the Maple Leafs, who have not beaten the Bruins in a playoff series since 1959.
Now they have the advantage of playing at home in Games 3 and 4 on Wednesday and Saturday in Toronto.
“We were able to level things up, but obviously there’s a long way to go here,” said Tavares, who was a part of the Maple Leafs team that lost a 3-2 lead to the Bruins in the 2019 playoffs. “You know they’re going to want to respond as well, so we’ve got to keep improving.”
Matthews scored 10 goals in an eight-game span towards the end of the season to reach 69, with two games remaining to try to reach 70 — a milestone only eight players in NHL history have achieved. He was kept from scoring in the final two regular season games and the first game of the playoffs — no assists either — matching his longest streak of the season without a point.
That ended on Monday, when he played a role in all three Toronto goals — none more crucial than his tiebreaking breakaway with eight minutes left that gave the Leafs their first lead of the series.
“It’s happening so fast, you don’t really have time to think,” Matthews said. “It’s honestly just instincts, and trying to make the right play.
Morgan Geekie and David Pastrnak scored for Boston. Linus Ullmark, starting as part of a goalie rotation even though Jeremy Swayman won Game 1 on Saturday, made 30 saves.
“No second guesses. He was terrific. He made multiple, big-time saves,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “It’s a strength of our team. Both of them played really well. We only scored two goals.”
Two nights after Swayman stopped Toronto 5-1, the Leafs beat Ullmark at least two – and probably three – times in the second before being credited with the tying goal.
With about six minutes left in the middle period, the Bruins goalie caught Calle Jarnkrok’s shot, but his glove may have been over the line when he did it. Replays never caught a clear picture of the puck and the line, so the no goal call on the ice was upheld.
Three minutes later — just 4 seconds into a Boston penalty for too many men on the ice – Tyler Bertuzzi swiped a puck out of the air and into the net. Although it was ruled a goal on the ice, replays showed Bertuzzi’s stick was above the crossbar and it was taken off the board.
Tavares scored a goal about 90 seconds later, clearly putting the puck in the net by faking a slapshot and then wristing it past Ullmark to tie the game at 2-2.
The Bruins, who had a four-goal lead in the first game on Saturday, scored a power-play goal in the first period when Brad Marchand passed the puck to Geekie. Soon after, Domi scored to tie the game at 1-1 by swiping at a rebound.
With only 8 seconds remaining in the first period, Boston took a 2-1 lead when Pavel Zacha made a backhanded pass to set up Pastrnak.
Keefe said that the other team's goal gave them energy and momentum for the second period, and the game had the potential to be similar to the last one, but they didn't let that happen.
HURRICANES 5, ISLANDERS 3
Late in the third period, Aho and Martinook scored 9 seconds apart to help the Carolina Hurricanes complete a comeback from three goals down to beat the New York Islanders, taking a 2-0 lead in their first-round playoff series in an unexpected way.
Aho scored first by redirecting Svechnikov’s shot at the right post behind Varlamov with 2:15 remaining to tie the game at 3. After an Islanders giveaway on the ensuing faceoff, Martinook raced down to beat Noah Dobson to the puck along the boards and then pushed it toward the same post with a wraparound attempt from behind the net.
The puck banged off Varlamov’s left skate and slipped into the net for the 4-3 lead with 2:06 to go, sending the Hurricanes players mobbing a jumping Martinook amid a roof-blowing roar from a shocked home crowd.
Jake Guentzel scored an empty-net goal in the final minute to seal this one, which ended with frustrations flaring for the Islanders, several scrums between the teams and multiple players taking early walks to the locker room.
The series shifts north for the next two games, with Game 3 set for Thursday night.
This was a tough ending for the Islanders, who used goals from Kyle Palmieri, Bo Horvat and Anders Lee — the last being a forehand-to-backhand finish atop the crease on the power play — to take a 3-0 lead early in the second period. And that had them ready to earn a split after losing 3-1 in Game 1 despite a performance that left coach Patrick Roy encouraged by his team’s play.
Instead, New York fell apart, starting with Varlamov taking a tripping penalty on Stefan Noesen to put Carolina on a power play. Teuvo Teravainen converted on the man advantage by finishing a feed from Guentzel at 13:01 of the second, cutting the deficit to 3-1 and bringing life back into a stunned-silent arena.
After that, the Hurricanes kept the pressure on, with continuous shifts in the offensive zone. This included Aho and Seth Jarvis each hitting the post late in the second, and then Guentzel in the third before Jarvis scored to bring Carolina to within 3-2 at 10:43 of the third.
The Hurricanes finished with a 39-12 shot advantage, with Varlamov facing 16 in the final period alone before finishing with 34 saves. New York, which had just one shot on goal in the third period, also had a goal waived off when Kyle McLean redirected the puck past Andersen with his stick high in the air.