Maple Leafs' habits of composure, patience will be crucial in Game 4 (2025)

For those wondering about the Maple Leafs and killer instinct, we would argue we’ve already seen it in the Battle of Ontario.

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Whether the Leafs win Game 4 on Saturday night in Ottawa to sweep the Senators won’t be based on an ability to put a team away.

It’s going to be more about continuing to do what the Leafs have been doing for quite a while and through the best-of-seven series: Playing smart, patient hockey for the most part and getting the offensive execution and saves when they are required. Factors, in other words, that the Senators have not quite grasped in falling into a three-game hole.

If you’re that concerned about a killer instinct, a term thrown around a lot in professional sports but not always easy to define, consider the Leafs’ manner in Games 2 and 3. Third-period goals by the Senators in each game didn’t faze Toronto, which went on to win both matches in overtime. That’s killer instinct to a degree, isn’t it?

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For the Leafs to win on Saturday, it’s important to fall back, if you will, on what got them here. The Leafs haven’t lost a hockey game since April 8, when the Panthers beat them 3-1 in Florida. Toronto won five in a row to finish the regular season and nine of 10.

It’s three in a row now in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and a fourth consecutive win would give the Leafs a nice cushion of rest and recovery before facing the winner of the Florida-Tampa Bay series.

The talk in the regular season was that coach Craig Berube had sculpted a Leafs group that was better prepared for the post-season than ever before, certainly in the era headed by captain Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander. We’re seeing it now.

Berube had some definitive answers when he was asked by media in Ottawa on Friday about why the Leafs have been locked in for as long as they have been.

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“We’ve been good at (having) composure and discipline down the stretch,” Berube said. “The game may not be going your way all the time and you may not think you have the puck enough. There’s a lot of things that play into it.

“We stay patient, we keep doing our job defensively and stay with it and it comes around and you get your opportunities. I think that has been a big part of our success. We have to keep focusing on that.

“There are going to be breakdowns, but we have people to help your teammate out and the extra effort that’s needed, the second and third effort you need. We have a lot of that going on right now.”

At no point through the first three games did it appear that the Leafs were in trouble. If you thought the Leafs were going to fall apart in either game that the Sens scored the tying goal in the third, you must have not been paying much attention from October to mid-April.

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Berube couldn’t pinpoint one game where he thought the Leafs figured it out. It has been a progressive build more than anything else.

“We were hungry to win the (Atlantic) division and I think our guys pushed to win the division,” Berube said. “That was a big part of it. We played good hockey.

“I don’t have one game where I thought things changed. I think we played pretty consistent hockey most of the year. We have been consistent at home and on the road.”

Berube got to the piece that is more crucial than the rest.

“It’s the mentality that you have to build throughout the season to get to this level,” Berube said. “If you don’t do it during the regular season, it’s hard to turn the switch on.

“I wanted to really get that identity across to our team right away. We wanted to play a north style of game and try to establish that throughout the season, which I think we have. Our guys have bought into it.”

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To be honest, there hasn’t been the general hostility between the teams in the series that we might have expected. There hasn’t been a war of words off the ice.

There was some pre-game silliness before Game 3 with Ottawa’s Nick Cousins shooting the puck at Leafs goalie Anthony Stolarz. The National Hockey League dealt with that quickly on Friday afternoon.

Yes, the Sens have been trying to get in the face of Stolarz, but not with the consistency one might have thought. Impact? None. It has not made a difference in the outcome of any game. Neither Ridly Greig nor Sens captain Brady Tkachuk nor any other Senators player has made a dent in the mental state of Stolarz.

The Leafs haven’t had to do anything similar with Linus Ullmark. They just keep shooting the puck past him.

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If any of this passes for bad blood, there hasn’t really been much at all.

With all of this said, is there a chance the Leafs lose in Game 4 and have to return home to try to finish the series in Game 5 at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday? Sure there is. As the Leafs keep telling us, the Senators are a good hockey team and they’re not going to go down without a major pushback.

For the Leafs to lose, there would have to be a breakdown in the things that Berube outlined, the things that the team has been doing well for weeks.

There hasn’t been much evidence of cracks in the Leafs. We really shouldn’t expect any now.

tkoshan@postmedia.com

X: @koshtorontosun

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