How Mitch Marner's 'Calmness, Confidence' Helped Maple Leafs Shine In Game 1 Win Over Senators

The experience of the 4 Nations Face-Off with Canada in February, where Marner tallied an overtime-winning goal and set up another overtime-winner against Team USA, helped him enter his ninth playoffs with Toronto with a sense of "calmness," he said.

"That tournament was pretty quick. It was obviously very, very intense, and that's kind of what playoffs is," Marner admitted after taking a 1-0 series lead over the Senators.

"It kind of happens quickly, games go by fast, and then you've got to look forward to the next one and realize that it's going to be even harder. So, yeah, I don't know, just calmness and confidence, obviously, from that tournament, which helps."

It wasn't just filling the back of the net, though, where Toronto's playoff experience shone through. Ottawa took penalty after penalty in the game, allowing the Maple Leafs to score three power play goals, two more than they had all last series against the Bruins.

Entering the final minutes of the third period, the Maple Leafs had seven power plays to the Senators' two. This game was proof that Toronto had more playoff experience than Ottawa.

"Like I said, we're disciplined. We're going to keep being disciplined. We're going to play hard between the whistles, the right way, and keep being physical, but we're not going to get involved in all the antics after the whistles or whatever," Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube said.

"Listen, refs call games, they call penalties for whatever reasons. I thought we checked well with our feet and our sticks tonight. We were hard on our net, doing things right to stay out of the box.

"You put yourself in the penalty box when you get on the wrong side of things and have to make desperate situations, and like I said, we're pretty clean overall with our physicality part of the game. And we gotta keep doing that."