The Toronto Maple Leafs go into Game 3 with home advantage after beating the Boston Bruins at the TD Garden in Boston.
After a series opener that saw the Leafs go down 4-1 in Boston, the Toronto team showed a lot of discipline and character to tie the series on Saturday with an impressive performance that will give them home ice advantage going into Game 3. Three of the next five games in the best of seven series will be played in Toronto, meaning the Bruins dropped more than just a game when they went down 4-2 in Boston to the Leafs.
First-line winger Joffrey Lupul, led the team in the attack with two very important goals in the second period, one of which put the Leafs up 2-1 on the Bruins going into the intermission. Lupul is one of the few players on the Leafs with more than 40 games of postseason experience.
"We bounced back; we've been doing it all year," said Lupul following the game. "I think that's one of the main differences [of] our team this year to last year: When we have had bad outings-like we did for sure in [Game 1]-we are able to refocus and bounce back."
53 seconds into the third period, Leafs forward Phil Kessel found himself on a breakaway and beat Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask to put Toronto 3-1 up on the scoreboard.
The Bruins suffered from defensive problems all night, and have to look into how to fix them for tonight's game.
"The breakdowns that we had defensively were poor breakdowns on our part and we gave them a lot of outnumbered situations," said Bruins head coach Claude Julien after the game.
"We have to be better defensively in order to be better offensively. I said that last time. Our team, when it's good defensively, it creates chances offensively; we turn pucks over and we go on the attack. But tonight, not quite as good as we were in Game 1."
The puck drops at 7:00 p.m. for Game 3, which can be live streamed for free here.
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