The Toronto Maple Leafs put forth a commanding performance against the Ottawa Senators in Game 1 of their first-round series Sunday night, beating Ottawa 6–2 and taking a 1–0 lead in the series. Thanks to a great team effort, the Leafs—who lost all four matchups with the Sens during the regular season—have drawn first blood in the Battle of Ontario.
The Core Four, D-men, and some beef
Right from when the Battle of Ontario video montage—set to Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue—played prior to the game, the atmosphere was electric. The game marked the first time the Senators and Leafs had met in the postseason since 2004—a first-round series that saw the Mats Sundin-led Leafs win in seven games.
This 2025 iteration of Ontario’s battle saw the Leafs get on the scoreboard first just over seven minutes into the game, when Calle Jarnkrok broke out past centre ice and dropped the puck off to Scott Laughton, who fed Oliver Ekman-Larsson in the slot for a clean wrister over the glove of Linus Ullmark. And once the seal had been broken, Mitch Marner followed up just over five minutes later, burying the biscuit on the breakaway off an impressive outlet pass from Auston Matthews.
Drake Batherson scored a close-quarters goal off the rebound to bring Ottawa within one with just under four minutes left in the first period, but when the second period rolled around, it was all Toronto.
With 15:53 left in the second period, John Tavares scored a rebound goal of his own, reclaiming the team’s two-goal cushion. Then, just over three minutes later, Tavares picked up an assist as well, winning the face-off draw to Nylander, who promptly skated between the face-off circles and rifled home a wrister over the pad of Ullmark.
The third period began with a goal by Morgan Rielly‘s worst enemy, Ridly Greig, but just 45 seconds later, Rielly got his sweet revenge, firing a wrister from just inside the blueline, which deflected off Senators forward Matthew Highmore and beat Ullmark on the high-glove side. Finally, with just under seven minutes to go, young gun Matthew Knies capped off a dominating Game 1 for the Leafs, getting the puck in the slot and sliding it home off assists from Marner and Matthews.
But, a Battle of Ontario playoff game would not be complete without some animosity between foes, and the end of this game had just that. There had been the odd skirmish throughout the game, but things boiled over with 43.7 seconds left in the game, when a scrum occurred along the boards, which ultimately led to Max Domi squaring up with Ottawa forward, Adam Gaudette. Domi ended up getting kicked from the game, and penalties were issued to a total of 10 players across both teams. And not much later, after the final horn, more hands were thrown as Chris Tanev and Senators forward, Shane Pinto, began trading blows with one another.
With all that bad blood between these two teams, it’s hard to believe that this was just Game 1.
Great team win backed by Stolarz’s excellence
Moving on from the roughhousing, this win marked the first time the Leafs had won the opening game of a series since Game 1 against the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2021–22. And what made this win that much sweeter was that it truly was a team win, with a different player scoring each of the six Leafs goals. Three of those goals were scored on the power play, which operated at a solid 50% efficiency on Sunday, more than double their season average of 24.8%.
Marner was named the first star of the game, and deservedly so with a three-point performance (one goal and two assists), showing that his old playoff ways might just be a thing of the past. The second star in this game, goaltender Anthony Stolarz, was just as impressive.
Although it may seem strange given the Leafs’ four-goal lead, the Senators actually had more shots on net, racking up 33 compared to the Leafs’ 24. But with Stolarz on his game, 31 of those shots were kept out as Stolarz put up a .939 save percentage. Even more impressively, this was Stolarz’s first-ever career playoff start. And if he can continue to shut the door like he did in Game 1, there will be no doubt that Leafs brass made the right move in giving Stolarz the No. 1 job in the playoffs.
Onto Game 2
Coming into this series, there has been a lot of talk about the pressure on the Leafs, compared to the Senators, and even more talk of whether or not the Leafs can exorcise the demons of playoffs past to go on a significant run this time around. And while one win in the first round doesn’t mean the Leafs are guaranteed Cup champions, if they can build off this win and make short order of the Senators, it could bode well for their confidence and play as the postseason rolls along.
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