SUNRISE, Fla. — Auston Matthews hadn’t scored against Florida in more than a year. He ended the drought — and might have also saved Toronto’s season.

Matthews got his first goal of the series to break a scoreless tie in the third period, Joseph Woll stopped 22 shots and the Toronto Maple Leafs kept their season alive by beating the Florida Panthers 2-0 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinal series Friday night.

“Just a gutsy, gutsy win,” Matthews said.

Game 7 is Sunday night in Toronto. The winner will face Carolina in the East final.

“We played a simple game tonight,” Leafs coach Craig Berube said.

Simple, but effective. Toronto blocked 31 shots, plus killed off all four Florida power plays.

Max Pacioretty added an insurance goal for the Maple Leafs, who improved to 4-2 when facing elimination since the start of the 2023 playoffs.

Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 15 shots for the Panthers, the defending Stanley Cup champions who oddly are only 8-7 in potential closeout games over the past three postseasons.

“You win or you learn,” Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. “Tonight, we learned.”

Florida coach Paul Maurice is 5-0 in Game 7s, including the final game of last season’s Stanley Cup Final. The Panthers are 3-1 all time in the ultimate game of a series — 2-0 on the road — while the Maple Leafs have lost each of their past six Game 7s. Of those, four were against Boston and now-Panthers forward Brad Marchand.

“We’re not going to show any video of those Game 7s,” Maurice said. “We’ll look at our game tonight and see where we can get better.”

It was the 68th game of this season’s playoffs — and only the second that was 0-0 after 40 minutes. The other was Wednesday night, when Edmonton eliminated Vegas with a 1-0 victory in overtime in Game 5 of that Western Conference semifinal series.

Toronto had five goals in Game 1, four more in Game 2 and had three by the early goings of the second period of Game 3. Add it up, and that was 12 in basically the first seven periods of the series.

From there, Toronto got basically nothing — until Matthews broke through.

The Toronto captain was 0-for-31 on shots against Florida this season, including the regular season. Bobrovsky had stopped 85 of the last 86 shot attempts he had seen in the series. And the Maple Leafs hadn’t had the lead in basically the equivalent of 3½ games — 216 minutes, 30 seconds, to be precise.

But when a pass got away from Florida’s Aaron Ekblad, Matthews had a slight opening — and that was all he needed. A low shot skittered along the ice and beat Bobrovsky for a 1-0 lead with 13:40 left.

“It’s a big win, from top to bottom,” Matthews said. “We earned that.”

LONDON, Ontario — The judge handling the trial of five Canadian hockey players accused of sexual assault dismissed the jury Friday after a complaint that defense attorneys were laughing at some of the jurors.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia will now handle the high-profile case on her own.

The issue arose Thursday after one of the jurors submitted a note indicating that several jury members felt they were being judged and laughed at by lawyers representing one of the accused as they came into the courtroom each day. The lawyers, Daniel Brown and Hilary Dudding, denied the allegation.

Carroccia said she had not seen any behavior that would cause her concern, but she concluded that the jurors’ negative impression of the defense could impact the jury’s impartiality and was a problem that could not be remedied.

Michael McLeod, Dillon Dube, Carter Hart, Cal Foote and Alex Formenton were charged with sexual assault last year after an incident with a then-20-year-old woman that allegedly took place when they were in London for a Hockey Canada gala celebrating their championship at that year’s world junior tournament. McLeod faces an additional charge of being a party to the offense of sexual assault.

All have pleaded not guilty. None of them is on an NHL roster or has an active contract with a team in the league.

The woman, appearing via a video feed from another room in the courthouse, has testified that she was drunk, naked and scared when men started coming into a hotel room and that she felt she had to go along with what the men wanted her to do. Prosecutors contend the players did what they wanted without taking steps to ensure she was voluntarily consenting to sexual acts.

Defense attorneys have cross-examined her for days and suggested she actively participated in or initiated sexual activity because she wanted a “wild night.” The woman said that she has no memory of saying those things and that the men should have been able to see she wasn’t in her right mind.

A police investigation into the incident was closed without charges in 2019. Hockey Canada ordered its own investigation but dropped it in 2020 after prolonged efforts to get the woman to participate. Those efforts were restarted amid an outcry over a settlement reached by Hockey Canada and others with the woman in 2022.

Police announced criminal charges in early 2024, saying they were able to proceed after collecting new evidence they did not detail.

BALTIMORE — Margie’s Intention outran Paris Lily in the stretch to win the Black-Eyed Susan by three-quarters of a length Friday.

The 1 1/8-mile race for 3-year-old fillies was delayed around an hour because of a significant storm that passed over Pimlico, darkening the sky above the venue. Margie’s Intention, the 5-2 favorite at race time, had little difficulty on the sloppy track with Flavien Prat aboard.

Paris Lily started impressively and was in front in the second turn, but she was eventually overtaken by Margie’s Intention on the outside.

Kinzie Queen was third.

Morning line favorite Runnin N Gunnin finished last in the nine-horse field.