The Bruins were so much better than the Leafs in Game 5, and it didn’t matter at all

The Maple Leafs aren’t finished. Their 4-3 win in Game 5 against the Bruins on Saturday means they’ll fight for at least one more game, maybe two, and maybe more than that.

The Bruins were the dominant team on the ice in this game— particularly so in the third period, where they had a 20-5 advantage in shots on goal. For the game, Boston’s shot-on-goal edge was 45-21, and that was a good reflection of how the game went.

And yet! The Leafs are still alive, because they got enough saves and snuck enough weird goals into the net to survive a game they could’ve lost by seven. So they’ll play a Game 6 in Toronto on Monday, when their backs will still be flush to the wall.

The reason isn’t even specific to the Bruins. It’s easy for fans to overreact to a home loss in a Game 5 where a team had a chance to close out a series. These are the losses that take a relative laugher of a series and turn it into something suspenseful. There’s no such thing as a cakewalk win in a road Game 6, and a hypothetical Game 7 helps nobody’s blood pressure. But teams that fail to close out a series in a home Game 5 go on to win the series 78 percent of the time, anyway. More than half (53 percent) finish it off in Game 6.

It’s a hell of a thing to say about a team that’s lost games by scores of 5-1, 7-3, and 3-1, but the Leafs haven’t been that much worse than the Bruins over the last 10 days. Possession stats aren’t everything, but in this series, they reach the same conclusions anyone would have reached by just watching the games: The Leafs have done some good things.

At five-on-five in the first four games, they controlled 53 percent of the shot attempts and 56 percent of the scoring chances. They had slight edges even when adjusted for score effects, like Boston spending much of the time with a lead to protect.

Goaltending had been the equalizer and then some for the Bruins. Despite making the save of the year in Game 3, Toronto’s Frederik Andersen had a rough first four games in total. He’d coughed up 13 goals on 108 shots, an .880 save percentage that produced a lopsided goals-against average worse than 4. Mike Babcock pulled him after three nearly immediate goals in Game 2, and after a brilliant, 40-saves-on-42-shots night in Game 3, he reverted to playing poorly in Game 4. The Bruins were scoring more than they should’ve. On the other end of the rink, Tuukka Rask had been more than solid to help the Bruins.

The script flipped on Saturday. Andersen stopped 42 of 45 pucks that got to him while the Bruins mounted their onslaught. They took 90 shot attempts to the Leafs’ 39. They had 52 scoring chances to the Leafs’ 19. It’s almost impossible to be that much better than another team in an NHL game. It’s mind-boggling that the Bruins didn’t win.

It happened because Andersen stood tall time and again, and Rask let in four goals on 13 shots before Anton Khudobin replaced him. Rask should be back in goal for Game 6, unless the Bruins have some kind of playoff death wish. But he gave up goals on Saturday that goalies ought not to give up in playoff series.

Boston had the advantage of a bunch of Toronto penalties. But the Bruins didn’t need power plays to rack up a huge possession edge. At even strength, they were great. Look at this plot of the game’s even-strength shot attempts, which shows the Bruins wearing down the Leafs progressively as the night wore on:

Andersen played a whale of a game.

It feels weird to be gassing up the Leafs’ chances, because they’ve looked completely unstable at points, too. Even when they were playing with a multi-goal lead in the middle portion of Saturday’s game, they continually looked primed for an implosion. There were several moments where Andersen prevented the game from getting away from them. When I watch the Leafs this series, I go back and forth every couple minutes between, “Wow, this is a Cup contender” and “Wow, this is the worst team I’ve ever seen.”

But there’s so little time left in the series that even if the Leafs play out of control, they could accidentally sprint into a couple of wins. Their skaters have had the wind at their backs all series, so they won’t have to rely completely on chaos to get by.

If the goaltending swings in their favor for two more nights, there’s no reason the Leafs can’t pull off a comeback that would look a lot more shocking than it should.