Brad Marchand scored on a deflected shot at 15:27 of overtime and the Florida Panthers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-4 on Friday night to cut their deficit in the Eastern Conference semifinal series to 2-1.
Aleksander Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Carter Verhaeghe and Jonah Gadjovich scored for Florida, which got 27 saves from Sergei Bobrovsky. Evan Rodrigues had two assists for the Panthers. They 13-2 in their last 15 playoff overtime games.
John Tavares scored twice, and Matthew Knies and Morgan Rielly also scored for the Maple Leafs. Joseph Woll stopped 32 shots.
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Game 4 will be in Sunrise on Sunday night.
Florida erased deficits of 2-0 and 3-1, and that's been almost impossible to do against Toronto this season.
By the numbers, it was all looking good for the Maple Leafs.
— They were 30-3-0 when leading after the first period, including playoffs, the second-best record in the league.
— They were 38-8-2, the league’s third-best record when scoring first.
— They had blown only 11 leads all season, none in the playoffs.
— They were 44-3-1 in games where they led by two goals or more.
Combine all that with Toronto having won all 11 of its previous best-of-seven series when taking a 2-0 lead at home, Florida being 0-5 in series where it dropped both Games 1 and 2, and leaguewide, teams facing 0-2 deficits come back to win those series only about 14% of the time.
But Marchand — a longtime Toronto playoff nemesis from his days in Boston — got the biggest goal of Florida’s season, rendering all those numbers moot for now.
The Leafs got two goals that deflected in off of Panthers defensemen: Tavares’ second goal nicked the glove of Gustav Forsling on its way past Bobrovsky for a 3-1 lead, and Rielly’s goal redirected off Seth Jones’ leg to tie it with 9:04 left in the third.
Knies scored 23 seconds into the game, the second time Toronto had a 1-0 lead in the first minute of this series. Tavares made it 2-0 at 5:57 and just like that, the Panthers were in trouble.
A diving Barkov threw the puck at the night and saw it carom in off a Toronto stick to get Florida on the board — only for Tavares to score again early in the second for a 3-1 Leafs lead.
Florida needed a break. It came.
Reinhart was credited with a goal after Woll thought he covered up the puck following a scrum in front of the net. But after review, it was determined the puck had crossed the line. Florida had life, the building was loud again and about a minute later, Verhaeghe tied it at 3-3.
Gadjovich made it 4-3 late in the second, before Rielly tied it midway through the third.
