Desperate Time In Toronto
from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,
Overtime goals are rarely acts of beauty.
They are often shots of desperation, pucks banged at, not aimed, with bodies piled up around the net.
That kind of desperate play is why the Tampa Bay Lightning won Game 6 in overtime. It may be the real difference between the Maple Leafs and the Stanley Cup-champion Lightning through six games of a highly competitive back-and-forth first-round playoff series.
The Leafs may have dominated overtime up until the point of Brayden Point’s bang-bang winning goal.
Just as they dominated overtime in Game 6 a year ago against a lesser team from Montreal, then turned the puck over once and lost the game and, eventually, the series.
With all of their goal-scoring skill, what the Leafs can lack at big moments is the kind of desperation the Lightning has shown in this series and in the previous two playoff runs as champions of the National Hockey League. It may sound cliche, but it isn’t. It’s the difference between winning a series and losing it. There is nowhere to mark ‘desperation’ on the game sheet, but you can see it and coach Jon Cooper demands it from his players — pucks to the net, go to the net.
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