How Game 5 of Leafs-Lightning will be won: Pathways to victory for each team
It started as a series of blowouts. It became a matchup defined by comebacks.
What’s remained the same throughout is that the Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning haven’t lacked for drama in their Eastern Conference first-round playoff series.
And the Leafs have got their foes on the ropes.
Let’s recap: The Atlantic Division rivals traded multigoal victories in Toronto to tie the series at 1-1 before it shifted down to Tampa. There, the Lightning blew late leads in regulation of Games 3 and 4, lost both tilts in overtime and are on the brink of elimination in a 3-1 series hole.
Tampa Bay heads back to Toronto for Game 5 on Thursday night, with nothing left to do but win its next three hockey games. Meanwhile, the Leafs have three cracks at closing out the recent back-to-back Stanley Cup champions and finally, for the first time in nearly 20 years, advance past the opening round of a playoff series.
Can the Lightning rally — and rattle — Toronto enough to still come out on top? Or will the Leafs quiet their critics — and quit being a punchline — by actually finishing off an opponent?
“It feels different,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said of his team after Game 4. “But we’ve got a tough task ahead.”
Here are five keys to victory for the Leafs and Lightning before Thursday’s battle of the blue-and-whites in Game 5:
Engage with urgency from the opening draw
Toronto overcame a one-goal deficit in Game 3 to win 4-3. It roared back from a three-goal disadvantage to take Game 4. That’s all well and good. But waiting until the last minute to come alive is unsustainable for the Leafs, especially with the Lightning playing with more desperation.
Urgency — or a lack thereof — has been Toronto’s downfall before. And the Leafs know full well Tampa Bay is capable of clawing back into a series. In last season’s first-round meeting, the Lightning were down 2-1 and 3-2 before closing the Leafs out in Game 7.
It’s no wonder Auston Matthews noted after the Leafs’ Game 4 victory: “The fourth [win] is the hardest to get.”
That has long held true for Toronto, and not just against Tampa Bay. There’s a reason the Leafs haven’t won a postseason series since 2004 and have been tossed from the opening round of their past six playoff (or play-in) opportunities. The Leafs don’t have to look far back to the last time they blew a 3-1 series lead; it was just two seasons ago against the Montreal Canadiens.
It’s time to finish this off.
Instead of letting Tampa Bay dictate the tone — as Toronto did for too much of Games 3 and 4 — it should be the Leafs taking it to the Lightning in Game 5. It should be Toronto playing like its season is on the line. Momentum is a powerful thing. The Leafs have it, and for once they can wield it properly — toward earning a series-deciding win — instead of handing the power back to the opposition.
Beware of vintage, Vezina-worthy Vasilevskiy
It’s been a particularly difficult playoff series for Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy. He might also be the most well-suited goaltender in the league to produce a Herculean response.
So far, Vasilevskiy is 1-3-0 with a 4.33 goals-against average and .856 save percentage. He’s allowed more goals in this four-game span (19) than any other such stretch in his playoff career. That total is also tied for the second-most goals given up by a netminder through the first four games of a playoff series since 1984.
Bottom line? Like much of Tampa Bay’s lineup, its goaltender hasn’t been good enough. There’s no victory in sight for the Lightning if that doesn’t change.
“We scored enough goals to win,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said following Tampa’s 5-4 loss in Game 4. “You’ve got to keep them out of your net.”
Fortunately for the Lightning, there’s a long history of Vasilevskiy doing just that. He entered this postseason with enviable stats, a 63-38-0 playoff record, including seven shutouts — six of which have come in elimination games.
Basically, Vasilevskiy has been the Lightning’s backbone with their season(s) on the line. Cooper pointed out that several of the goals Vasilevskiy allowed late in Game 4 were tips and deflections, strikes that any goaltender — even ones who have won the Vezina Trophy, Conn Smythe Trophy and Stanley Cup — would struggle to stop.
Vasilevskiy can’t undo what’s happened. But he can still be that clutch performer Tampa Bay has relied on for the past decade. And few things would get into Toronto’s heads quite like seeing Vasilevskiy go full-on shutdown mode with so much at stake.
Don’t deviate; elevate
The Leafs’ supposedly improved depth was a constant talking point heading into this series.
Lo and behold, the rumors were true. Toronto has graduated beyond just relying on its core of star players — namely Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander — and has attacked the Lightning from all angles (and every line) throughout the past four games.
To date, the Leafs have had 10 different goal scorers, seen six players pass the six-point mark, and gotten key contributions from one rookie (Matthew Knies) and two trade-deadline acquisitions: Ryan O’Reilly, with seven points, and Noel Acciari with two goals.
The Leafs’ chemistry is palpable. The trick is not to overthink it.
Toronto already made one key decision in deciding not to insert Michael Bunting back into the lineup for Game 5. The feisty top-line forward was suspended three games for elbowing and interference against Tampa defenseman Erik Cernak in Game 1. He was eligible to return for Game 5, but Keefe said Wednesday that Bunting will remain on the bench.
Ultimately Keefe decided that, despite what Bunting brought to the team with a 49-point regular season effort, it wasn’t worth disrupting the group that has won three straight playoff games. Not that he’s afraid to move players around — at Wednesday’s practice, Knies had been elevated to the Leafs’ second line with Tavares and Marner.
That’s just a further example of how the Leafs can continue using all the players they have to keep Tampa Bay on its toes — and avoid their previous fate as a one-dimensional foe.
“[I like] the top-to-bottom six and that’s part of the decision to not insert Bunting in, [so we’re] maintaining that,” Keefe said. “We’re trying to establish something where we are comfortable playing all four lines. That was our intention going into the series. We thought we were in a good spot that way and had to adjust along the way, which is what we had to do the other night [in Game 4]. The players responded well, we can always make other adjustments if needed, but we like to group [this] way.”
Lightning need full team effort on defense
“In the end, you’ve got to defend,” Cooper noted after Game 4. “And you’ve got to keep the puck out of your net.”
That’s been easier said than done for Tampa Bay lately, but it has established the right blueprint of what not to do.
The primary problem is that Tampa Bay’s blueline isn’t the same without Cernak. He’s been absent since the Game 1 hit by Bunting, and he won’t be dressing for Game 5, either.
Victor Hedman missed time early in the series because of an injury and is likely not at 100%. Mikhail Sergachev has been banged up and briefly left Game 4 after blocking a shot from O’Reilly. The Lightning are leaning on rookies Darren Raddysh and Nick Perbix to play critical minutes, and they’ve delivered admirably. What Tampa Bay truly requires, though, is more defensive buy-in across the board.
“In the totality of things, would we like to have Cernak in our lineup, a top-four defenseman for us? Yes,” Cooper said. “[But] we’ve gotten in our own way, obviously, at some of these points.”
Toronto learned the hard way in Game 1’s disastrous 7-3 loss that if it didn’t start wrapping up the Lightning’s top-flight forwards in front of the net and stopping them from setting up a strong cycle, it was about to be a short series. Tampa Bay must make the same investment in its end.
Instead of leaving Vasilevskiy out to dry, it’s on Tampa Bay’s entire five-man units to be pressuring Leafs’ skaters to the outside and not allowing them to set up in front. Pushing shots through traffic is how Toronto worked its way back in Game 4, and a tighter effort from the Lightning — particularly through the neutral zone — won’t allow the Leafs those opportunities to get in Vasilevskiy’s line of vision.
Cooper admitted his team might have sat back in the third period of that Game 4 loss. There’s nothing like the threat of impending elimination to light a fire under any player — regardless of superstar status — to do the dirty work necessary that keeps a team’s hopes alive for a Game 6.
Wanted: Perked-up PKs
Special teams play an important role in every postseason series.
The charitable thing to say is that Tampa Bay and Toronto have been equally good in this one on the power play. Another reality is that, at times, both teams’ penalty kills have been something of an eyesore.
Going into Game 5, Toronto is at 70.6% on the PK (and 6-for-17 on the power play).
Tampa Bay is even worse at 64.7% on the PK (and 5-for-17 on the power play).
Will this all-important, potentially series-deciding Game 5 be determined by whose penalty kill is less awful?
The Lightning penalty kill gave up a game-winning power-play goal to Alexander Kerfoot in Game 4. Toronto’s kill has been discombobulated at times by Tampa Bay’s four-forward look on the man advantage (see: allowing four power-play markers in Game 1).
Staying out of the box would help, obviously. Tampa Bay has taken more penalties (27) than any team in the postseason. The Leafs aren’t far behind with 23 infractions.
There have been heroic short-handed moments from both sides, too. Key shot blocks. Dives into shooting lanes. Aggressive pressure and positive results.
It’s just takes one bad decision, though. One careless clear or sloppy turnover when you’re down a man and it won’t be even-strength play that rules the day. That can be a tough pill to swallow with results on the line.
JIM ABBOTT IS sitting at his kitchen table, with his old friend Tim Mead. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were partners in an extraordinary exercise — and now, for the first time in decades, they are looking at a stack of letters and photographs from that period of their lives.
The letters are mostly handwritten, by children, from all over the United States and Canada, and beyond.
“Dear Mr. Abbott …”
“I have one hand too. … I don’t know any one with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy.”
“I am a seventh grader with a leg that is turned inwards. How do you feel about your arm? I would also like to know how you handle your problem? I would like to know, if you don’t mind, what have you been called?”
“I can’t use my right hand and most of my right side is paralyzed. … I want to become a doctor and seeing you makes me think I can be what I want to be.”
For 40 years, Mead worked in communications for the California Angels, eventually becoming vice president of media relations. His position in this department became a job like no other after the Angels drafted Abbott out of the University of Michigan in 1988.
There was a deluge of media requests. Reporters from around the world descended on Anaheim, most hoping to get one-on-one time with the young left-handed pitcher with the scorching fastball. Every Abbott start was a major event — “like the World Series,” Angels scout Bob Fontaine Jr. remembers. Abbott, with his impressive amateur résumé (he won the James E. Sullivan Award for the nation’s best amateur athlete in 1997 and an Olympic gold medal in 1988) and his boyish good looks, had star power.
That spring, he had become only the 16th player to go straight from the draft to the majors without appearing in a single minor league game. And then there was the factor that made him unique. His limb difference, although no one called it that back then. Abbott was born without a right hand, yet had developed into one of the most promising pitchers of his generation. He would go on to play in the majors for ten years, including a stint in the mid ’90s with the Yankees highlighted by a no-hitter in 1993.
Abbott, and Mead, too, knew the media would swarm. That was no surprise. There had been swarms in college, and at the Olympics, wherever and whenever Abbott pitched. Who could resist such an inspirational story? But what they hadn’t anticipated were the letters.
The steady stream of letters. Thousands of letters. So many from kids who, like Abbott, were different. Letters from their parents and grandparents. The kids hoping to connect with someone who reminded them of themselves, the first celebrity they knew of who could understand and appreciate what it was like to be them, someone who had experienced the bullying and the feelings of otherness. The parents and grandparents searching for hope and direction.
“I know you don’t consider yourself limited in what you can do … but you are still an inspiration to my wife and I as parents. Your success helps us when talking to Andy at those times when he’s a little frustrated. I’m able to point to you and assure him there’s no limit to what he can accomplish.”
In his six seasons with the Angels, Abbott was assisted by Mead in the process of organizing his responses to the letters, mailing them, and arranging face-to-face meetings with the families who had written to him. There were scores of such meetings. It was practically a full-time job for both of them.
“Thinking back on these meetings with families — and that’s the way I’d put it, it’s families, not just kids — there was every challenge imaginable,” Abbott, now 57, says. “Some accidents. Some birth defects. Some mental challenges that aren’t always visible to people when you first come across somebody. … They saw something in playing baseball with one hand that related to their own experience. I think the families coming to the ballparks were looking for hopefulness. I think they were looking for what it had been that my parents had told me, what it had been that my coaches had told me. … [With the kids] it was an interaction. It was catch. It was smiling. It was an autograph. It was a picture. With the parents, it ran deeper. With the parents, it was what had your parents said to you? What coaches made a difference? What can we expect? Most of all, I think, what can we expect?”
“It wasn’t asking for autographs,” Mead says of all those letters. “They weren’t asking for pictures. They were asking for his time. He and I had to have a conversation because this was going to be unique. You know, you could set up another player to come down and sign 15 autographs for this group or whatever. But it was people, parents, that had kids, maybe babies, just newborn babies, almost looking for an assurance that this is going to turn out all right, you know. ‘What did your parents do? How did your parents handle this?'”
One of the letters Abbott received came from an 8-year-old girl in Windsor, Ontario.
She wrote, “Dear Jim, My name is Tracey Holgate. I am age 8. I have one hand too. My grandpa gave me a picture of you today. I saw you on TV. I don’t know anyone with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy. I hope to see you play in Detroit and maybe meet you. Could you please send me a picture of you in uniform? Could you write back please? Here is a picture of me. Love, Tracey.”
Holgate’s letter is one of those that has remained preserved in a folder — and now Abbott is reading it again, at his kitchen table, half a lifetime after receiving it. Time has not diminished the power of the letter, and Abbott is wiping away tears.
Today, Holgate is 44 and goes by her married name, Dupuis. She is married with four children of her own. She is a teacher. When she thinks about the meaning of Jim Abbott in her life, it is about much more than the letter he wrote back to her. Or the autographed picture he sent her. It was Abbott, all those years ago, who made it possible for Tracey to dream.
“There was such a camaraderie there,” she says, “an ability to connect with somebody so far away doing something totally different than my 8-year-old self was doing, but he really allowed me to just feel that connection, to feel that I’m not alone, there’s other people that have differences and have overcome them and been successful and we all have our own crosses, we all have our own things that we’re carrying and it’s important to continue to focus on the gifts that we have, the beauty of it.
“I think sometimes differences, disabilities, all those things can be a gift in a package we would never have wanted, because they allow us to be people that have an empathetic heart, an understanding heart, and to see the pain in the people around us.”
Now, years after Abbott’s career ended, he continues to inspire.
Among those he influenced, there are professional athletes, such as Shaquem Griffin, who in 2018 became the first NFL player with one hand. Griffin, now 29, played three seasons at linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks.
Growing up in Florida, he would watch videos of Abbott pitching and fielding, over and over, on YouTube.
“The only person I really looked up to was Jim Abbott at the time,” Griffin says, “which is crazy, because I didn’t know anybody else to look up to. I didn’t know anybody else who was kind of like me. And it’s funny, because when I was really little, I used to be like, ‘Why me? Why this happen to me?’ And I used to be in my room thinking about that. And I used to think to myself, ‘I wonder if Jim Abbott had that same thought.'”
Carson Pickett was born on Sept. 15, 1993 — 11 days after Abbott’s no-hitter. Missing most of her left arm below the elbow, she became, in 2022, the first player with a limb difference to appear for the U.S. women’s national soccer team.
She, too, says that Abbott made things that others told her were impossible seem attainable.
“I knew I wanted to be a professional soccer player,” says Pickett, who is currently playing for the NWSL’s Orlando Pride. “To be able to see him compete at the highest level it gave me hope, and I think that that kind of helped me throughout my journey. … I think ‘pioneer’ would be the best word for him.”
Longtime professional MMA fighter Nick Newell is 39, old enough to have seen Abbott pitch for the Yankees. In fact, when Newell was a child he met Abbott twice, first at a fan event at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan and then on a game day at Yankee Stadium. Newell was one of those kids with a limb difference — like Griffin and Pickett, due to amniotic band syndrome — who idolized Abbott.
“And I didn’t really understand the gravity of what he was doing,” Newell says now, “but for me, I saw someone out there on TV that looked like I did. And I was the only other person I knew that had one hand. And I saw this guy out here playing baseball and it was good to see somebody that looked like me, and I saw him in front of the world.
“He was out there like me and he was just living his life and I think that I owe a lot of my attitude and the success that I have to Jim just going out there and being the example of, ‘Hey, you can do this. Who’s to say you can’t be a professional athlete?’ He’s out there throwing no-hitters against the best baseball players in the world. So, as I got older, ‘Why can’t I wrestle? Why can’t I fight? Why can’t I do this?’ And then it wasn’t until the internet that I heard people tell me I can’t do these things. But by then I had already been doing those things.”
Griffin.
Pickett.
Newell.
Just three of the countless kids who were inspired by Jim Abbott.
When asked if it ever felt like too much, being a role model and a hero, all the letters and face-to-face meetings, Abbott says no — but it wasn’t always easy.
“I had incredible people who helped me send the letters,” he says. “I got a lot more credit sometimes than I deserved for these interactions, to be honest with you. And that happened on every team, particularly with my friend Tim Mead. There was a nice balance to it. There really was. There was a heaviness to it. There’s no denying. There were times I didn’t want to go [to the meetings]. I didn’t want to walk out there. I didn’t want to separate from my teammates. I didn’t want to get up from the card game. I didn’t want to put my book down. I liked where I was at. I was in my environment. I was where I always wanted to be. In a big league clubhouse surrounded by big league teammates. In a big league stadium. And those reminders of being different, I slowly came to realize were never going to go away.”
But being different was the thing that made Abbott more than merely a baseball star. For many people, he has been more than a role model, more than an idol. He is the embodiment of hope and belonging.
“I think more people need to realize and understand the gift of a difference,” Dupuis says. “I think we have to just not box everybody in and allow everybody’s innate light to shine, and for whatever reasons we’ve been created to be here, [let] that light shine in a way that it touches everybody else. Because I think that’s what Jim did. He allowed his light to permeate and that light, in turn, lit all these little children’s lights all over the world, so you have this boom of brightness that’s happening and that’s uncontrollable, that’s beautiful.”
NEW YORK — Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong is projected to receive the largest amount from this season’s $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool based on his regular-season statistics.
Crow-Armstrong is on track to get $1,091,102, according to WAR calculations through July 8 that Major League Baseball sent to teams, players and agents in a memo Friday that was obtained by The Associated Press.
He earned $342,128 from the pool in 2024.
“I was aware of it after last year, but I have no clue of the numbers,” he said Friday. “I haven’t looked at it one time.”
Pittsburgh pitcher Paul Skenes is second at $961,256, followed by Washington outfielder James Wood ($863,835), Arizona outfielder Corbin Carroll ($798,397), Houston pitcher Hunter Brown ($786,838), Philadelphia pitcher Cristopher Sánchez ($764,854), Cincinnati shortstop Elly De La Cruz ($717,479), Boston catcher Carlos Narváez ($703,007), Red Sox outfielder Ceddanne Rafaela ($685,366) and Detroit outfielder Riley Greene ($665,470).
Crow-Armstrong, Skenes, Wood, Carroll, Brown, De La Cruz and Greene have been picked for Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
A total of 100 players will receive the payments, established as part of the 2022 collective bargaining agreement and aimed to get more money to players without sufficient service time for salary arbitration eligibility. The cutoff for 2025 was 2 years, 132 days of major league service.
Players who signed as foreign professionals are excluded.
Most young players have salaries just above this year’s major league minimum of $760,000. Crow-Armstrong has a $771,000 salary this year, Skenes $875,000, Wood $764,400 and Brown $807,400.
Carroll is in the third season of a $111 million, eight-year contract.
As part of the labor agreement, a management-union committee was established that determined the WAR formula used to allocate the bonuses after awards. (A player may receive only one award bonus per year, the highest one he is eligible for.) The agreement calls for an interim report to be distributed the week before the All-Star Game.
Distribution for awards was $9.85 million last year, down from $11.25 million in 2022 and $9.25 million in 2023.
A player earns $2.5 million for winning an MVP or Cy Young award, $1.75 million for finishing second, $1.5 million for third, $1 million for fourth or fifth or for making the All-MLB first team. A player can get $750,000 for winning Rookie of the Year, $500,000 for second or for making the All-MLB second team, $350,000 for third in the rookie race, $250,000 for fourth or $150,000 for fifth.
Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. topped last year’s pre-arbitration bonus pool at $3,077,595, and Skenes was second at $2,152,057 despite not making his big league debut until May 11. Baltimore shortstop Gunnar Henderson was third at $2,007,178.
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