The series is tied at one game all, the goals are 7-4 for Boston, and the Corsi is 56% to Toronto.

Team Results

There has been one second less than 21 minutes of five-on-four power play time, with Boston getting 11:46 and Toronto 9:13. The power play opportunities are 7-6 for Boston.

There have been 109 faceoffs, and Toronto has won 53 to Boston's 56.

The all-situations heat map shows you the low-danger goals Toronto has allowed, but also the far better quality of their own shooting.

All-situations, Boston's Shooting % is 13.21 to Toronto's 5.8. Toronto leads in Expected Goals 8-6.

Both teams have approximately one Expected Goal on the power play from a Corsi of 18-16 for Boston. Both teams have four Corsi For shorthanded, but Boston's shots have been better quality.

Overall, the Leafs have played better at five-on-five and are about equal on special teams. The output (goals) doesn't match the inputs (shots) because of two things that you can't pick apart with any eye-test. Goals don't read the stat sheet and instead they arrive when they arrive. The goaltenders are people who vary in skill and performance.

In other words it's not just the goalies, nor is it just randomness. It's not just defensive quality not revealed by shot counts, nor is it just shooter skill. It's just everything.

Player Results

The Matchups

To measure the line by line matchups, an imperfect measure is the matchup faced by the centre. Auston Matthews, for example, plays some bits of time with other wingers, which is the away team technique to get a better matchup. But this is close enough to get the idea.

Auston Matthews

In 31:49 minutes at five-on-five, Matthews has the following centre foes:

  • Charlie Coyle (line 2) - 17:19
  • Pavel Zacha (line 1) - 5:46
  • Jesper Boqvist (line 4) - 5:13
  • Morgan Geekie (line 3) - 4:49
John Tavares

Total time at five-on-five is 22:36

  • Zacha - 13:10
  • Coyle - 3:46
  • Geekie - 2:51
  • Boqvist - 2:34
Pontus Holmberg

Total time at five-on-five is 18:40

  • Geekie - 12:03
  • Boqvist - 4:19
  • Zacha - 2:02
  • Coyle - 1:18
David Kämpf

Total time at five-on-five is 23:46.

  • Geekie - 10:19
  • Boqvist - 8:19
  • Zacha - 3:10
  • Coyle - 1:43

So that's very stark. Jim Montgomery had a very firm matchup plan and he stuck to it. He blasted John Tavares with his top line (David Pastrnak is the winger there) and tried to contain Auston Matthews with the Coyle line (Brad Marchand lives there).

Sheldon Keefe used the fourth line like the third line and vice-versa, but Montgomery just left the bottom sixes to duke it out.

Results

The most any line not the standard arrangement played for Toronto is 3:13, so I'm comfortable using Natural Stat Trick's Forward Lines stats for this part.

Matthews

The top line had 63% score adjusted Corsi, 68% Expected Goals and a Goals For % of 100.

Tavares

The line matched to the Bruins top line had 48% score adjusted Corsi, 32% Expected Goals and 0% Goals For (the were scored on once).

That Corsi to XG drop needs to be examined. They went from 10-13 in Corsi to 8-12 in Fenwick. But the xG is .35 to .86. (All of that is not score adjusted to avoid the fractional shots which just confuse the issue.) So the shocking reason is that David Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha had more and higher quality shots. Danton Heinen figured in about as much as Matt Knies.

Holmberg

The actual fourth line had 65% Corsi and 68% Expected Goals. No goals were scored by anyone when they were on the ice.

Kämpf

This line that played a touch more against better lines had 71% Corsi and 75% Expected Goals. Each team scored one goal while they were on the ice.

Conclusion

The line matching did one thing for Montgomery – it took the lesser Leafs top six line out of the picture. I have to assume that Montgomery thought he was going to be nullifying William Nylander and also putting Charlie Coyle and Brad Marchand up against Matthews. Matthews was supposed to melt against that onslaught, so even without Nylander there, Montgomery doggedly stuck to his plan.

The Leafs absolutely rolled the Bruins bottom six. That's such an overwhelming result, it's almost hard to believe. We all saw Nick Robertson get some scoring chances, as did Connor Dewar.

Sheldon Keefe has some decisions to make – and that will depend on what Montgomery does with his lines, he may mix up the top six.

For me I will take John Tavares kept to a null factor to get Matthews up against a guy who can't handle him any day of the week.

If Nylander is back and is capable of his usual magic, then the options are to move him to the top line, get him on the ice for extra shifts with the bottom six or just remember that even if he's on line two and it loses its matchup they're still in the offensive zone quite a bit.

I don't like Nylander on the third line. But in this case, there is an argument for it on paper where the second line really plays third-line minutes and the third line steps up and takes the second most minutes. I just really question if Pontus Holmberg can play against Zach or Coyle. And if the Leafs want to put Nylander on line three, there's only so far they can go up the minutes played list without running into those two head on.

We'll see what happens next.