Bruins defeat Maple Leafs in Game 6, extend series

TORONTO -- Brad Marchand had two goals and an assist for the Boston Bruins, who avoided elimination with a 4-2 win against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference First Round at Scotiabank Arena on Sunday.

The best-of-7 series will be decided in Game 7 at Boston on Tuesday.
"When the season is on the line, you want to play hard, you want to leave it all out there," Marchand said. "Sometimes it bounces your way, sometimes it doesn't. Luckily today it bounced our way. Again, though, we're fighting for our season now, next game, we don't know how it's going to play out, but we're going to have fun doing it."
WATCH: [All Bruins vs. Maple Leafs Game 6 highlights | Complete series coverage]
Jake DeBrusk and Torey Krug scored, and Tuukka Rask made 22 saves for the Bruins.
"To me this is the best we've played," Boston coach Bruce Cassidy said. "We kind of knew we had to step up. Today was more the way we wanted to play, we wanted to be aggressive keeping pucks alive with our defensemen. I thought we were attacking the net better, just more overall of our identity. Obviously we were desperate, but this is the kind of thing we talked about on Saturday about trying to hit our ceiling."

Morgan Rielly and Auston Matthews scored, and Frederik Andersen made 37 saves for the Maple Leafs.
"I thought we were really ready, we were jumping big time," Toronto coach Mike Babcock said. "But then, as soon as we had a little adversity and they scored twice, we didn't recover. I don't know if that's the emotions got the better of us, but we couldn't get it back in check. To say we weren't ready, that would be totally wrong."

Rielly gave Toronto a 1-0 lead at 9:42 of the first period. Marchand tied it 1-1 at 11:23, scoring a power-play goal when he got to a loose puck off a scrambled face-off.
"[Patrice] Bergeron did a great job keeping the battle alive there," Marchand said. "When the puck came loose, I knew it was going to be a pretty quick play. I just wanted to get it to the net and luckily it went in."
Krug gave the Bruins a 2-1 lead at 17:02 when he one-timed a rebound from David Pastrnak's shot at the right face-off dot on the power play.
The Bruins were 2-for-2 on the power play and 2-for-2 on the penalty kill in the first period.

"They came out playing well," Rielly said. "I thought we matched it. Obviously, them getting two on the power play is not what we wanted. It's important that we get that sorted out on the penalty kill."
DeBrusk made it 3-1 at 7:57 of the second period when he deflected David Krejci's pass at the top of the goal crease.
"I dropped it to Krejci and I understood it was probably going to come back to me at some point, so I just tried to extend my stick and get to it, so I was lucky to cash in on that," DeBrusk said.
Matthews made it 3-2 at 4:15 of the third period when he took a pass from Jake Gardiner and scored from the top of the right face-off circle. He has five goals in a four-game streak.

Marchand scored an empty-net goal with 1:54 remaining to make it 4-2.
"I think we worked hard," Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy said. "You have to respect them, they're a good team and they've been making it hard on us down low, but I think we worked hard and had a mindset that we weren't going to be denied tonight. Our big players came through and they were able to get us the offense we needed."

They said it

"Listen, he's going to step up. I thought Game 4 here, very similar to tonight, he and Bergeron were going through stuff before the game in the hall. You can tell when you're around players long enough when they have that little extra. Clearly he wasn't ready to have [the series] end and I think [in Game 7] you'll see a lot more of that. That's just who he is, that's how he's become an elite player in the League." -- Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy on Brad Marchand

"You know what, it's a tough loss. We would have loved to have closed it out on home ice tonight. We didn't, so we'll regroup as a team, move forward and learn from our mistakes. We'll be ready to go in Boston in a couple days. I thought our first five or six minutes were good, but then their power play got them going and we didn't really have an answer." -- Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews

Need to know

The Bruins and Maple Leafs are the third teams in NHL history to have a series go to Game 7 in three consecutive head-to-head postseason appearances. Boston won Game 7 in the first round last year (7-4) and in the first round in 2013 (5-4 in overtime). The other teams to do it were the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames (1989, 1994, 2004), and the New York Rangers and Washington Capitals (2012, 2013, 2015). … Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara would play his 13th Game 7, which would tie him with Patrick Roy and Scott Stevens for the NHL record.

What's next

Game 7 of Eastern Conference First Round at TD Garden on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; NBCSN, SN, CBC, TVAS, NESN)