LeafsNation75
Registered User
I remember how they were down 3-1 in the 2018 series.They were also down 3-1 in that series and won 2 out of 3. And last year we owned them the whole series, kadri cost us our advantage of having nylander as a top 6 instead, it made our 3rd line redundant. We would have won game 4 or 6 last year if we had kadri for sure. Games 7s are crapshoots
Besides the ripple effect of Kadri's suspension last year and somehow going up 3-2 with a chance to eliminate Boston in Game 6 and leading 1-0 in the 1st period, the difference was Boston scoring back to power play goals in the 1st period taking a 2-1 lead, than they made it 3-1 in the 2rd period. Although Kadri didn't play on the penalty kill so he wouldn't have made a difference on the Boston's power play goals.
I previously mentioned how Matthews made it a 3-2 game in the 3rd period and Babcock kept line matching and didn't change anything like double shifting him since he was Toronto's best player that whole series.