The Battle of Ontario had all the makings of a series for the ages. It would have been that way regardless, considering the history between the two teams in a playoff setting, but when you pair a young, playoff-starved Ottawa Senators team with a Toronto Maple Leafs team that was looking for only their second playoff series victory in the Auston Matthews era, you have a showdown equipped with province’s worth of fireworks.

The series started off strongly in Toronto’s favour, with the Leafs taking each of the first three games, two of them in overtime. They got tons of production from the Core 4, and a couple of depth players in Max Domi and Simon Benoit got to play hero in the aforementioned overtime wins. Anthony Stolarz was looking sharper than anyone in net, and the team seemed to find a way to beat his counterpart in Linus Ullmark.

Then came Game 4, and the demons started to set in.

With an opportunity to sweep the series, the Leafs went into overtime for a third-straight game in Game 4. It seemed like the Senators were all but toast when they took a double-minor high-sticking penalty in overtime, giving the Leafs’ surging power play four minutes with a man advantage to score. The Senators went on to pull off the biggest penalty kill of the series, which gave them the momentum that led to an overtime-winning goal from defenceman Jake Sanderson. Okay, fair. It would have been foolish to expect the Senators to bow out in four games, especially with how many fits they gave the Leafs in the regular season, so going down 3-1 wasn’t necessarily a doomsday scenario yet. Come back to Toronto and finish the job on home ice, plain and simple.

If only it were that easy.

The Leafs played easily their worst game of the series on Tuesday night, dropping Game 5 to the Senators 4-0. For the first time all series, they couldn’t solve Ullmark, and the Senators capitalized on a couple of timely mistakes from the Leafs, including an ill-timed giveaway from Matthews on the power play that led to a shorthanded marker from Dylan Cozens. For fans of most teams, this still isn’t cause for concern. You have two more opportunities to win the series, and you showed that you could dominate possession against this team, so what’s to worry about? Well, we’re talking about the Maple Leafs. Although the makeup of the roster was much different, this was the same core group of players that choked away a 3-1 series lead against the Montreal Canadiens in 2020-21. When something like that happens, anything is possible.

Thankfully for the team and the fans, it didn’t play out that way. While it didn’t come without an excess of gray hairs within the fanbase, the Leafs found a way to pull it out. This was despite some poorly-timed penalties and an extremely flukey tying goal that banked off of Stolarz’s mask and into the net from behind the goal line. In the past, instances like this would have left fans feeling like a loss was all but guaranteed, but Max Pacioretty had something to say about that.

So, here we are. The Leafs are past the first round and getting ready for a heavyweight tilt with the Florida Panthers. How did they do it? Simply put, they got production in every area where they’ve dried up in the past.

Let’s start with the Core Four. Nobody takes more heat for the Leafs’ lack of playoff success than Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, and John Tavares. They’re the four highest-paid players on the team, so when the team struggles to score timely goals, it’s obvious who’s going to catch the most flak for that. This time around, especially after Game 6, there was no flak to catch. Here’s a look at how the Core Four performed through six games.

Safe to say the Core Four understood the assignment. Not only were they the leaders of the team’s offence, they showed up when the team needed them the most. Matthews scored a power play goal to open the scoring in Game 6, William Nylander scored two goals, including an empty-netter, and Mitch Marner picked up an assist. It set the stage for Pacioretty’s game-winning goal and paved the way for scoring all around the lineup.

Let’s touch on that next. The Leafs got goals from some unlikely candidates from the series, notably from their defensive corps. The Leafs were last in the NHL in goals from defencemen in 2024-25, but flipped a switch in the playoffs with two goals from Morgan Rielly, two from Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and one from Simon Benoit. The latter’s goal was easily the biggest and most unlikely of the series, with Benoit coming into the series with five goals in his entire career. Still, the way he scored proved the narrative that all you need is a bounce to go your way to be a hero in the playoffs. He threw the puck on net immediately after the faceoff, and it paid off for him.

The special teams deserve some recognition, too. The Leafs’ power play started off sizzling hot, going 5-for-9 heading into Game 4, but they hit a slide in Games 4 and 5 as the demons began to rear their ugly heads. It didn’t matter in Game 6, though. Matthews’ power play goal gave the Leafs the lead at the perfect time, which eventually led to the win and a 6-for-17 power play in the first round of the playoffs and snapping a ghastly 0-for-30 drought in elimination games spanning all the way back to 2017-18. They won the special teams battle against the Senators, who finished the series 3-for-15 on their own power play and were held off the scoresheet in Game 6. Winning the special teams battle won’t guarantee a series victory, but it goes a long way, and the Leafs were up to the task.

Finally, we have to give Stolarz his flowers. The Leafs haven’t necessarily had horrendous goaltending performances statistically, but their goaltenders have always had a tendency to allow a horrible goal at a bad time that killed momentum. You could argue that David Perron’s tying goal on Thursday night was that goal for Stolarz, and perhaps if the Senators won the game, the conversation would be different. But they won, so it’s a moot point, and overall, Stolarz saved the Leafs much more than he held them back. It’s clear that sticking with him in Game 6 despite a couple of rough games in a row was the right call, and he’ll have more motivation than ever to take down his former team in the second round.

The Leafs’ demons aren’t gone, yet. But they were temporarily silenced with a series victory over the Senators, and it’s sure to give the team some momentum in what will be a bloodbath of a second round against the Panthers.