After one of their most dominating and complete performances of the entire season, the Maple Leafs were looking to push Columbus to the brink of elimination on Thursday night.

In an encouraging trend, the Maple Leafs came ready to play from first puck drop. Most noticeable at the start was Auston Matthews, who over the span of his first shift had a zone entry, a shot that was blocked that resulted in a Cody Ceci chance in the slot, a beautiful back-check, and a blocked shot of his own. Throughout the series we’ve seen Matthews coming low in the defensive zone to support his defencemen and that first shift was a great illustration of his 200-foot play this postseason.

Speaking of coming to play, the fourth line of Kyle Clifford, Jason Spezza and Pierre Engvall created havoc and chances seemingly every time they hit the ice. On that line’s first shift of the game, Engvall carried the puck around the perimeter of the zone and threw it into the crease, where it bounced around and couldn’t be found by CBJ netminder Joonas Korpisalo. Clifford and Spezza were in the mix jamming away at the loose puck, and a scrum ensued after the whistle blew.

Toronto’s biggest breakdown came when the Blue Jackets entered the zone on an odd-man rush, with the puck being moved back to a trailing Boone Jenner, who clanged the puck off the cross bar and exited back out through the crease. Close one. This was one of many times on the night where the Blue Jackets were able to find a trailing forward or defenceman for a Grade A chance against the Leafs.

With the Leafs heading to the PK at the end of the period due to a weak interference call on Travis Dermott, things weren’t looking great. Marner made a heads-up play to deny Boone Jenner the first goal of the match, and then a miracle happened: Cody Ceci scored a goal. The shot, which was initially destined for the Toyota advertisement in the corner, bounced off Seth Jones’ ankle and past Jonas Korpisalo for perhaps the most surprising goal since Martin Marincin did this. Shout out to Kerfoot here for the hustle on the PK, and the vision to send the puck back to the point instead of just dumping it into the corner.

1-0 Leafs after 20.

The Leafs were hemmed in their own zone for much of the early second period, but managed to fend off the Jackets’ scoring chances.

Mitch Marner put together a really impressive shift where he back-checked to cover for a pinching Leafs defenceman and created a turnover, then went the other way and hit the cross bar. For Marner it felt like a switch flipped after that shift, and his brain and legs came back after a seven-period hiatus. On a powerplay, Marner sauced an unbelievable pass to William Nylander who caught the puck on his forehand while facing away from the net, pivoted to face the net, and cashed it.

Moments later, some good hustle from Kapanen created space as he button-hooked in the corner and fed the puck back to 18-year-old goal-scoring machine Nicholas Robertson, who scored his first career NHL goal on a blast from the left circle. The puck trickled through Korpisalo’s gear and into the net. Korpisalo was then replaced by Elvis Merzlikins (which I don’t think is a real name).

I have a note here that says “FA (Andersen) looks dialled in.” which is immediately followed by “CBJ score on beautiful cross-seam pass by ZW (Zach Werenski) to PLD (Pierre-Luc Dubois)”. So some or most of the blame falls on me here.

That goal seemed to galvanize the Blue Jackets as they spent the next few minutes buzzing around the Leafs’ zone looking for a second goal. What was comforting is that Toronto seized back control of the puck after a few minutes and pretty much controlled things through the last portion of the second period, with Marner drawing a hooking penalty from Boone Jenner.

The Leafs didn’t do much with the powerplay during the last 58 seconds of the second.

3-1 Leafs after 40.

Funny thing about the third period. The teams came together before the opening whistle and decided “we’ve got another game tomorrow, let’s just give this one to Toronto and go to bed early”, and that was it. 3-1 Leafs final.

What overtime? I just told you what happened after the second period.

The Leafs didn’t do much with the remaining 1:02 of their powerplay, either. Columbus began throwing everything at the Leafs’ net and cycling the puck, leading to a Justin Holl tripping penalty where his stick accidentally got between Foudy’s legs. The Leafs killed that penalty off, not allowing any shots against.

15 minutes left with a 2-goal lead.

And then the wheels came off. Nick Foligno gets away with interference as he cross-checks William Nylander in front of the Leafs net just a second before Seth Jones sniped a shot from the half-wall top corner, because apparently cross-checking penalties aren’t allowed to be called against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Three minutes later, Travis Dermott pinches in the Columbus zone and he actually gets a piece of the attempted zone clear, but the puck hits his body and makes its way to a streaking Pierre-Luc Dubois, who chips it past the swinging stick of Kasperi Kapanen and is off to the races on a 2-on-1. Holl takes away the pass and gives Andersen the shot from Dubois, as Kapanen dives in desperation to try to affect Dubois’ shot. He’s a few feet too short, and Dubois snipes it far-side, between Andersen’s blocker and torso.

9 minutes left. The game is tied.

The Leafs really did have multiple chances in the latter part of the third period to re-take the lead. There was one sequence late in the third, with three minutes remaining, where the puck just kept returning to Mitch Marner’s stick. After shovelling it in front, Auston Matthews was almost successful in pulling the puck out of the pile and roofing it, but rushed the chip and had it stay in Merzlikins equipment.

John Tavares entered the Columbus zone, stopped up, spun around, and fed a pinching Cody Ceci with the puck. Ceci outwaited the CBJ defender and tried to pass the puck in front to a Leafs forward (Mikheyev?), but the puck skittered past and out of danger.

Matthews’ one major gaffe this game could have been costly, but luckily Andersen was there to bail him out. Boone Jenner got positioning on Matthews and forced a turnover just above the circles in the Leafs zone, but Andersen was well out of his net to cut down the angle and nothing came of the error.

Foligno could have been called for a high stick in the final two minutes, but NHL referees are too cowardly to make calls that might decide close games, so a blind eye was turned.

The Jackets exploded out of the gate, quickly getting out to a 5-0 lead in shots, but the Leafs put together an incredibly strong segment of back-to-back-to-back shifts where they completely controlled possession and had multiple chances. Leafs players put so much energy into those few shifts that you could almost predict that there would be a fall-off at some point if they didn’t score here.

Morgan Rielly absolutely saved a goal during yet another Blue Jackets odd-man rush, having a shot at a wide open net hit his stick as he sprawled in desperation to get anything in the way of the shooter.

My brain is actually blocking out the breakdown that lead to the Jackets’ winner, but what I can tell you is that the guy who injured our most reliable defenceman in the final two minutes of our previous game completed a hat trick, because it’s the Leafs and we can only lose in spectacular, embarrassing, enraging fashion.

Matthews may only have a secondary assist to show for himself tonight but he was all over the puck tonight, especially on the defensive side of things, where he blocked numerous shots, back-checked extremely hard, broke up plays, and supported his defencemen down low in the zone. Plus, he was up to his usual stuff, which is: creating scoring chances. One of his most complete performances.

Runners-up: Alex Kerfoot (great hustle, smart plays, two assists), Mitch Marner (welcome back)

This pains me to say, as someone who: (a) has spent the better part of the last two years picking up for William Nylander; (b) thinks he has the best bang-for-the-buck contract of the Big 4, (c) owns one of his jerseys: but I hated his third period and overtime tonight so much that it nullified his beautiful goal. I would have liked to see way more hustle out of Nylander towards the tail-end of this game, as he constantly lost puck battles and held up on 50-50 pucks to avoid contact. This level of work ethic is not good enough in high-stakes games.

Runners-up: Travis Dermott (some suspect decision-making in this game, trying to do too much), Tyson Barrie (when’s the last time he did something that made you go “WOW!” in a positive fashion)

The Leafs need to forget this one quickly, as they’re back at it again for Game 4 tomorrow night at 8pm EST. Tune in and probably get your heart broken!