Achi news desk-
BOSTON – Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews returned to the lineup for Game 7 against the Boston Bruins on Saturday night.
Toronto was also less of a big piece and helped the club climb out of a 3-1 hole to force the do-or-die tilt – goalkeeper Joseph Woll was nowhere to be found when the teams went out for warm-ups in TD Garden.
The Leafs announced as the players hit the ice that the 25-year-old suffered an undisclosed injury in their Game 6 win. Woll was outstanding in allowing two goals over seven periods of action as part of a 2-1 win in consecutively to drag Toronto back into its first-round playoff series, but appeared to hurt himself in the dying seconds on Thursday.
He was on the ice for Saturday morning’s skate in the beginners net. He stayed down briefly on two sequences after moving to his left, but finished the session. Ilya Samsonov, who started the best of seven games before being pulled in Game 4, was back between the pipes for Toronto.
An NHL owner who reached 69 goals in the regular season, Matthews missed the last two contests after being pulled from Game 4 with an illness.
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The 26-year-old was on the ice for the morning skate and appeared to be moving well, but head coach Sheldon Keefe seemed to hint that the Leafs are once again preparing to be without their main attraction
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Toronto winger Mitch Marner said Matthews, who arrived at the rink Saturday morning wearing a Star Wars T-shirt, has been handling the absence as expected.
“You get asked 1,000 times a day, ‘How are you doing?'” Marner said. “It’s annoying. He wants to be out there. He’s a hell of a competitor. You’ve seen it at every level.”
Keefe was asked before Game 5 if something else – namely an injury – was bothering Matthews, but he declined to answer directly.
The workhorse forward skated Wednesday at the team’s practice facility in Toronto and again Thursday for about 30 minutes before Game 6.
Meanwhile, Woll started 2023-24 strong with an 8-5-1 record and a .916 save percentage before suffering a high ankle sprain in December that sidelined him exactly 12 weeks.
His numbers weren’t nearly as good upon his return to action on February 29 – 4-6-0 with an .890 save percentage as Toronto pressured Samsonov down the stretch – but he stepped up in the playoffs with his team in desperation mode.
The Leafs also dealt with the absence of winger William Nylander (an undisclosed injury) for the first three contests of the series.
Toronto came back from 3-1 deficits in 2013 and 2018 against Boston before losing Game 7 on the road. The Bruins also took down the Leafs in a series that went the distance in 2019 at TD Garden.
The Toronto-Boston winner will meet the well-rested Florida Panthers in the second round starting Monday after they dispatched the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-1.
Three-time Richard Maurice Trophy winner (Rocket) as the NHL’s leading goal scorer, Matthews had a monster Game 2 three-pointer to help Toronto even the series with the Bruins, but he didn’t look like himself two nights later in and a 4-2 Loss as he battled the illness that would eventually force him out of Game 4.
Toronto is 3-0 this season without Matthews, including two wins facing elimination this week and a 7-0 regular season win over the Pittsburgh Penguins in mid-December.
The Leafs entered Saturday with a 1-16 record all-time in a 3-1 series trailing, but Boston blew that same lead last season in the first round against Florida.
Matthews became the first NHLer since Mario Lemieux in 1995-96 to reach 69 goals, falling one short of becoming ninth in history to reach 70.
This report was first published by The Canadian Press on May 4, 2024.
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& copy 2024 The Canadian Press
