Apr 20, 2025; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews (34) congratulates forward John Tavares (91) on his goal against the Ottawa Senators during the second period of game one of the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Scotiabank Arena. Mandatory Credit: John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images
The Toronto Maple Leafs exploded for three power-play goals against the Ottawa Senators in a 6-2 victory in Game 1 of their first-round series in the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Discipline was key as the experienced Leafs only allowed two power-play chances compared to six by Ottawa.
Toronto's power play, scored once in their first-round series exit against the Boston Bruins last year, showing once and for all that scoring with the man-advantage doesn't seem to be a problem for the Blue and White.
"The power play has been rolling for a while," Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube said after the game. "For me, it's about getting pucks to the net with numbers at the net. And I can't say enough about Matthew Knies and JT (John Tavares) in those areas. They've done an extremely good job at, you know, all their work in the interior of the ice."
The five-forward power play consisting of the aforementioned players, Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews and William Nylander, have locked things in recently. All season long, Berube has tweaked the power play subtly to adopt a 'two-at-the-net' approach.
Berube also talked about:
- Getting the physical edge of the game while staying disciplined
- Getting spread out offense from their entire lineup
- The performance and timely saves of Leafs goaltender Anthony Stolarz.
- Keeping the focus on Game 2
Q: Your overall thoughts on the game and the physicality?
Yeah, physical. We were physical in the first period. I thought they were too. I mean, it's physical. It's going to be physical and I thought that we did a good job of controlling our emotions and playing through it. We have to and it's going to be a battle and it was.
Q: What do you make of your star players leading the charge offensively?
Yeah, they played, they just played. The intensity ramps up in the playoffs. All this other stuff, but you just gotta go play and they did that. I thought they played a solid hockey game and they went against the Stutzle line (The Matthews line) most of the night. I thought they did a good job and, you know, our special teams are good. We didn't have to kill a lot of penalties. We were pretty disciplined, but our power play was obviously very good tonight. Those guys did a good job.
Q: How did you feel Stolarz performed in his first playoff start?
Well, he had to make some big saves. I thought in the second period after we had the 5-on-3. He had three really good opportunities after that when it became 5-on-5 he made big saves. I thought he was solid. Very solid tonight.
Q: Craig, Why do you think he's going to be able to generate so many power plays tonight and did you sense an edge in experience for your team?
Well, penalties are penalties. 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. Listen, that's, you know, ref call games, they call penalties for whatever reasons. I mean, 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 know. You put yourself in the penalty box and you don't get on the wrong side of things and have to make sense of situations. And like I said, we're pretty clean overall with our physicality part of the game. And we're going to keep doing that.
Q: What does it mean to you to see your team score six goals and have spread out production when it's been difficult in the playoffs in the past?
Yeah, well it's great. And I think we've done that all year. If you look at the production up and down our lineup, it's pretty spread out for the most part. You know, we need everybody. We talked about that before the series that everybody needs to contribute at some point in some way. You know, you need guys to put pucks in the net that normally don't do it in the playoffs. And that's big. A lot of times your top guys are going to get check and they're going to get checked and they're not going to get a lot of opportunities a lot of times and you need. So you needs, a lot of times to see other people step up to do the job. And we did a good job of that tonight. Listen, it's one game, it's going to get harder. We all know that.
Q: How surprised were you to see the Tavares cross-check get reduced to a minor?
That's not my call.
Q: What do you think of the call?
That's not my call. That's not my call. I mean, the referees and the league will look at things and make the call they make. We're not going to focus on that. We're going to focus on what we need to do the next game. It's the same as, I thought they made some attempts at our goalie and sliding into him and things like that. But that's not for us to worry about. We've got to focus on playing. We've got to focus on ourselves and what we need to do. The league will look after that stuff.
Q: Craig, following up on what you said about Anthony, you won a Stanley Cup with Jordan (Binnington) not only was it the amount of saves but when you need to saves. When you look at the save he made on Tkachuk, how big is that? The timing of the save?
Timely savings are huge. We all know that. Especially in playoffs they go a long way. He made some timely saves that were really important to keep it where it was and keep the momentum going. So he was huge in that department.
