Auston Matthews drives Leafs to the “Muisian” game 6 against Panthers.

Sunrise, Fla. – Auston Matthews had not achieved Florida for more than a year. He ended the drought – and could also have saved Toronto’s season.

Matthews scored his first goal of the series to break a goalless tie in the third period, Joseph Woll stop 22 shots and the Toronto Maple Leafs kept their season alive by defeating the Florida Panthers in game 6 of the Semifinal series Eastern Conference 2-0 on Friday evening.

“Just a brave, brave victory,” said Matthews.

Game 7 is on Sunday evening in Toronto. The winner meets in Carolina in the East Finale.

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

Simple, but effective. Toronto blocked 31 shots and killed all four power games in Florida.

Max Pacioretty added an insurance target for the Maple Leafs, which have improved to 4: 2 since the beginning of the 2023 playoffs.

Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 15 shots for the Panthers, the defending Stanley Cup champions, who are strangely 8-7 in potential clothing games in the last three post-seasons.

“You win or learn,” said Panther’s captain Aleksander Barkov. “We learned tonight.”

Florida’s coach, Paul Maurice, is 5-0 in game 7, including the last game of the Stanley Cup final of last season. The Panthers are 3-1-2: 0 on the street-while the Maple Leafs have lost each of their last six games. Of these, four were against Boston and now Panther striker Brad Marchand.

“We won’t show a video of these games 7,” said Maurice. “We will watch our game and see where we can get better tonight.”

It was the 68th game of the playoffs these season and only the second, which was 0-0 after 40 minutes. The other was Wednesday evening when Edmonton Vegas removed with a 1-0 win in the extension in game 5 of this western conference semi-final series.

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

Basically, Toronto got nothing – until Matthews broke through.

The captain of Toronto was 0: 31 against Florida this season, including the regular season. Bobrovsky had stopped 85 of the last 86 attempts to shoot, which he had seen in the series. And the Maple Leafs basically didn’t have the equivalent of 3½ games – 216 minutes, 30 seconds, more precisely.

But when a pass from Aaron Ekblad came away in Florida, Matthews had a slight opening – and he needed everything he needed. A low-shot drove along the ice and beat Bobrovsky for a 1-0 lead with 13:40 left.

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