Maple Leafs vs. Bruins 2018: Boston wins first-round series in 7 games

It took a full seven games, but the Boston Bruins were able to outlast the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round of the 2018 Stanley Cup playoffs, including a 7-4 home win in Game 7.

The Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs finished second and third, respectively, in the Atlantic Division this season and will meet in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Boston had a chance to clinch the top seed in the Atlantic but lost its final regular season game, giving Tampa Bay the divisional crown. The Maple Leafs are looking to get past the first round for just the second time in 13 seasons.

The Maple Leafs won three of the four meetings against the Bruins this season, including one overtime victory on Nov. 10 in Toronto. Boston’s lone win came at home, a 4-1 triumph on Feb. 3.

David Pastarnak is just 21 but led the Bruins with 35 goals in his fourth NHL season, including two goals and two assists in four games against Toronto.

The Maple Leafs are loaded with young talent headlined by 20-year-old Auston Matthews, who scored 34 goals in his second season. Toronto’s three top point getters — Mitch Marner, Matthews and Nylander — are just 20, 20, and 21 years old, respectively.

The series will be streamed online by NBC Sports.

As two of the original six NHL teams the Bruins and Maple Leafs have a long and storied history in the Stanley Cup playoffs, meeting 14 different times in the postseason dating all the way back to 1933.

But despite that history this is just the second playoff meeting between Boston and Toronto in the last 44 years. The last meeting was in the second round in 2013, a seven-game series that ended with a Boston overtime win in Game 7. Before that the Bruins last met the Maple Leafs in the playoffs in 1974.