Auston Matthews breaks through, Maple Leafs beat Panthers 2-0 to force Game 7

SUNRISE Fla AP Auston Matthews hadn t scored against Florida in more than a year He ended the drought and might have saved Toronto s season in the process Matthews got his first goal of the series to break a scoreless tie in the third period Joseph Woll stopped shots and the Toronto Maple Leafs kept their season alive by beating the Florida Panthers - in Championship of the Eastern Conference semifinal series Friday night Just a gutsy gutsy win Matthews disclosed Tournament is Sunday night in Toronto The winner will face Carolina in the East final We played a simple contest tonight Leafs coach Craig Berube mentioned Simple but effective Toronto blocked shots plus killed off all four Florida power plays Max Pacioretty added an insurance goal for the Maple Leafs who improved to - when facing elimination since the start of the playoffs Sergei Bobrovsky stopped shots for the Panthers the defending Stanley Cup champions who oddly are only - in expected closeout games over the last three postseasons You win or you learn Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov noted Tonight we learned Florida coach Paul Maurice is - in Championship s including the final competition of last season s Stanley Cup Final The Panthers are - all-time in the ultimate battle of a series - on the road while the Maple Leafs have lost each of their last six Championship s Of those four were against Boston and now-Panthers forward Brad Marchand We re not going to show any video of those Battle s Maurice reported We ll look at our encounter tonight and see where we can get better It was the th challenge of this season s playoffs and only the second that was - after minutes The other was Wednesday night when Edmonton wound up eliminating Vegas with a - win in overtime in Championship of that Western Conference semifinal series Toronto had five goals in Event four more in Contest and had three by the early goings of the second period of Competition Add it up and that was in basically the first seven periods of the series From there Toronto had managed basically nothing until Matthews broke through The Toronto captain was for on shots against Florida this season including the regular season Bobrovsky had stopped of the last shot attempts he had seen in the series And the Maple Leafs hadn t had the lead in basically the equivalent of games minutes 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 - lead with left It s a big win from top to bottom Matthews declared We earned that