You don’t need me to tell you again that the Leafs couldn’t have better-executed a road win in game one in Boston. We all saw it with our own eyes.

Toronto will try to play with that same tenacity tonight in a game with absolute monster implications if they can take it down. I’d assume that most people, the Leafs themselves included, were looking to take a split back to Toronto and not fall behind like they did last spring, resulting in an almost-impossible uphill climb to take down game seven. To replicate Thursday’s performance and go home with a 2-0 lead would really put the Leafs not just in the driver’s seat (they’ve already done that by stealing home ice), but in total control of the series and take a lot of air out of Boston’s tires.

As for what that should look like, the Leafs will likly again need to weather an early storm from the Bruins because TD Garden will be a madhouse this evening. And from there the stars need to take over like they did last game. Tavares, Marner, Nylander all got on the board and Matthews looked lethal a number of times. Babcock leaned on his big guns heavily, didn’t pursue the matchup game too hard, and got things to a point where Cassidy tried to get his killer Bergeron line away from Tavares. That all needs to happen again, and perhaps we should expect the top forwards to see their ice-time share increase even further, as Matthews nearly clocked in over 21-minutes in the opener, by far the most he’s ever been used in the playoffs.

The lineups, as always, from DailyFaceoff: