Tempers flare in final seconds as Maple Leafs drop season series finale to Senators 5-3

The pressure from the Maple Leafs continued right after Matthews opened the scoring. The third line, with Noah Gregor on it for now, thought they had scored again, doubling the lead, but was challenged by Ottawa for offside, wiping the goal off the board. Morgan Rielly threw the puck cross-crease to Max Domi, and it redirected off his skate and in.

It wasn’t an overly dominant period for Toronto, but it’s safe to say they looked like the better team through the first ten minutes. However, with roughly five minutes to go, Ottawa started to come on. They were stuck at four shots for what seemed like forever but started to generate more looks on Martin Jones, and with a little over two minutes left in the period, Ottawa tied the game up.

It started with Morgan Rielly breaking the puck out to Mitch Marner. He skated through the neutral zone, looked like he got tripped, turned the puck over, and the Senators had a 3-on-1. Jones made the initial save, but Claude Giroux cleaned up the rebound, backhanding his 16th of the season past Jones.

Toronto entered the first intermission tied 1-1 and outshot 10-8.

After giving up a late goal in the first period due to a neutral zone turnover, the Toronto Maple Leafs did it yet again at the beginning of the second period, and Vladimir Tarasenko scored his 14th of the season on a breakaway to give his team the 2-1 lead.

You could see Ottawa start to build off that end to the first period. They got more looks in the offensive zone, forced Toronto into multiple turnovers, and didn’t give them much to work with.

Fortunately, Toronto managed to get the next goal to avoid going down by two. Off an offensive zone face-off, Matthews fed Marner, who threw it toward the net, and Matthew Knies swatted his ninth goal of the season past Korpisalo to tie the game up at two.