Joffrey Lupul was sure he had it, the game-winner. And if it wasn’t him the feeling on the bench was that someone would get it. A team full of guys getting their first taste of life in the playoffs as a Toronto Maple Leaf were anything but sitting on the edge of their seat during the most exciting 13 minutes of hockey played in this city in nearly a decade.
They were pushing forward, forcing the action.
“It really felt like we were putting on a lot of pressure and on the bench it felt like a matter of time until we got one,” Lupul said moments after Toronto’s 4-3 loss to the Boston Bruins, a defeat both dispiriting and uplifting all at once even it dropped them behind in the series 3-1. “So it hurts a lot, but we felt like we did a lot of things right and this series is not over; we feel we’re playing better and better.”
The game had already been an opera, full of impossible highs and crushing lows. The baby-faced Leafs, trailing 2-1 in the series to the grizzled Boston Bruins, had jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first period only to give it all back in the second, with three unanswered goals.
There had already been an unlikely hero. Clarke MacArthur, a healthy scratch in Games 2 and 3, was hearing it at home where his father Dean was visiting. His coach throughout minor hockey, his dad wasn’t shy about letting his son know where he was falling short. “I can’t mow the lawn right now without getting instructions,” MacArthur was saying earlier in the day.
His goal late in the second period tied the score 3-3, and after a nervous, taut but goalless third period, the table was set for overtime, and let’s face it: there is no fan base more deserving of some free hockey than those that pump their money into the coffers at Air Canada Centre.
They got their money’s worth. It was as if with such a long gap between the highs that can only come with playoff hockey in Toronto the two teams had stumbled into some hidden cache of laboratory-grade adrenalin imported from a jungle-based compound in an undisclosed South American country.
There were enough plays in overtime to last an entire game as the Leafs and Bruins combined for 20 shots and perhaps a half-dozen legitimate scoring chances in the extra period.
Just after the eight-minute mark Lupul, who opened the scoring on the Leafs’ first shot of the game and assisted on the second goal was sure he’d won the game. He ripped a low screaming drive from the right circle that he was sure was going to beat Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask.
“It was an unreal save,” said Lupul. “I took the shot and it was through the defenceman’s legs and it looked like it was going inside the post.”
Rask somehow grabbed it from just over his left toe. And in the moments before the faceoff the strangest thing happened. There was a loud, spontaneous roar during the stoppage in play. It wasn’t prompted by any zany messages on the scoreboard or thumping, theme-based music or by a frantic in-arena entertainer.
It was a mass response to the wonder of it all: an overtime playoff game in Toronto and an appreciation for an underdog team that was pressing the action against an experienced, tough, playoff club that will consider anything short of an appearance in the Stanley Cup final as a disappointment.
In contrast to the Bruins the Leafs are happy to be here, but the longer they stay the less they want to leave.
“It was fun. You don’t like to sit here and smile after a loss,” said Lupul, who leads the Leafs with three goals in the series. “But it was a great hockey game.”
As much as has been made about the Leafs’ post-season drought and the waves of giddiness that washed over the city and the ACC on Monday night for their first home date since 2004, Wednesday night was the real deal. Wednesday night was the reason for all the fuss. All of that had come before was the joy at being pregnant; Game 4 was the prize.
And it wasn’t just the giddy fans, awash in the sense of the new. Randy Carlyle has been around the NHL game as a player and a coach for 35 years and he was as much a mess as any paying customer. He’s spent parts of two seasons trying to get a young, soft team to accept the kind of sacrifices necessary to compete in the playoffs and the lessons were being tested before his eyes and in front nearly 20,000 witnesses.
“Inside your guts are churning, simple as that,” he said. “Every shot that’s directed to your net the emotions are up then down; your breath is taken away. I found I was climbing up on the bench more than I’d ever done, but that’s the excitement that’s there on the bench and the adrenaline rush that you do get.”
But it comes at a price. The adrenaline surge is the same kind you get jumping out of an airplane or walking along the edge of a cliff — as long as it’s metaphorical, sudden-death is fun, but the end comes suddenly and it hurts.
In the Leafs’ case it came from a menu the team has offered before — and on a regular basis in the bad old, playoff-free days. A Phil Kessel turnover deep in the corner; and ill-advised and clumsily executed pinch by team captain Dion Phaneuf, a passive response by an over-matched partner — in this case Ryan O’Byrne, who waved feebly in retreat at the Bruins’ David Krejci. And as a last line of ignominious defence, a rather soft shot from the high-scoring Bruins centre leaked through Leafs goalie James Reimer.
And that was it. A game that had delivered highs, lows and a combined 120 hits — not to mention Leafs defenceman Mark Fraser to the hospital after taking a puck to the face early in the third period — came to a crashing end thanks to a series of small errors lining up like dominoes.
“It feels like a dagger after the effort that was put forth by our group. It was a men’s hockey game out there,” said Carlyle. “A lot of energy, a lot of physical play, but that’s the way the playoffs are played. That’s the way they are supposed to be played.”
With pleasure comes pain, but Wednesday night wasn’t the fatal blow. The Leafs get another chance in Game 5 and their goal is simple: they’ve got a taste of what a playoff game played on the edge feels like and they want more.
“It’s a big-time rush, playing in these playoff games, hearing the crowd like that, scoring goals, making plays,” said Lupul. “It’s a lot of fun and right now our only thought is to get this series back here for Game 6.”