Maple Leafs defeat Canadiens in OT, clinch home ice for 1st round

TORONTO -- Mitch Marner scored 36 seconds into overtime, and the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Montreal Canadiens 1-0 at Scotiabank Arena on Saturday.

The Maple Leafs clinched home ice for the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs with a top-two finish in the Atlantic Division. Toronto leads the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers by four points in the division.

Marner, who had just come off the bench, took a pass from William Nylander and shot from the left hashmarks to give Toronto the win. The goal came 12 seconds after Anthony Stolarz stretched out his left pad to stop Nick Suzuki, who split Toronto’s defense, on a breakaway.

“Luckily I jumped over, ‘Willy’ made a great play on a little curl up and I was able to have some time, go down hill and pick my spot,” Marner said.

“It’s great, you want to be home as much as you can for the playoffs. It will be great. It’s always exciting in this barn when playoffs come around.”

The loss prevented the Canadiens from clinching a playoff berth. Montreal could have clinched a wild card with a win in regulation. The Canadiens lead the Columbus Blue Jackets by five points for the second wild card into the playoffs from the Eastern Conference.

“Stay the course, play the game that’s in front of you like we did tonight, and things will work out,” Montreal coach Martin St. Louis said. “You just have to stay the course. I’m really proud of the way the guys played tonight off a back-to-back. It was a big point for our group and not just the way we got the point, we had to fight [for it] a little bit.”

Anthony Stolarz made 15 saves for the Maple Leafs (49-26-4), who are 7-1-1 in their past nine.

Toronto played with 17 skaters and had only five healthy defensemen because of roster limitations under the salary cap. Oliver Ekman-Larsson, a defenseman, did not play and is day-to-day because of an undisclosed injury sustained in a 4-3 overtime win against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday.

“We talked about just playing real good defense, tight and I thought our team did that,” Toronto coach Craig Berube said. “Helped our defense out. We didn’t spend much time in our defensive zone, nothing off the rush and the forwards did real good job of getting above people tonight and our defense were really good I thought.”

“We talked about it from the morning on and how we need to play this game tonight and protect our defense and not have extended zone time. We had a couple shifts but that just tires our defense out when we only have five of them. They did a good job. There was definitely an awareness tonight to be above people and check.”

Jakub Dobes made 34 saves for the Canadiens (39-31-10), who are 6-1-1 in their past eight, losing their past two after a six-game winning streak.

“I wouldn’t say we didn’t try to force it,” St. Louis said. “We were really disciplined in playing the game that was in front of us. They defend extremely well, and I wish some of our shots got through and found a way to the net. … Compared to some of the volume we sent towards the net, it was an above average night I feel. I think it was like 57 [shot attempts]. As a coach when the group plays the game in front of them and does whatever is asked in terms of what’s next, we did that tonight.”

The Maple Leafs outshot the Canadiens 21-7 after two periods and 34-15 after regulation. The 15 shots against were a season-low for the Maple Leafs, surpassing the previous low of 18 given up against the Vancouver Canucks in a 3-0 loss on Jan. 11.

“At the end of the day it’s something you have to adapt to, it’s something as a goalie it happens,” Stolarz said. “Some nights through two periods you might have 30 [shots], you might have seven. It’s on you to stay focused and ready and that’s why I’m always engaged and talking to the defensemen and trying to play the puck as much as I can just so I can stay engaged in the game.”

“Just our commitment to a 200-foot game, obviously with five [defensemen], guys are going out there pretty frequently so I think they did a really good job of managing our shifts and a lot of credit to our forwards who made the defensemen’s jobs a lot easier. Very rarely did they hem us in our zone.”

Dobes kept it 0-0 at 4:30 of the third period with a stretching right toe save on Nicholas Robertson at the side of the net.

The Canadiens killed off an 18-second 5-on-3 power play that began at 4:41 and the final 1:42 of the two-minute minor penalty for slashing to David Savard.

“Our PK was great tonight,” Suzuki said. “They probably secured the point for us. They have a lot of talent over there, and they were moving it around, but we had a lot of big blocked shots… We’ve leaned on our PK a lot this season and it came up big again.”

NOTES: The Maple Leafs will recall defenseman Dakota Mermis from Toronto of the American Hockey League and he will play Sunday against the Carolina Hurricanes, Berube said. … Suzuki’s seven-game point streak (seven goals, six assists) ended.