Rielly’s glass-half-full attitude is admirable for someone who endured a wild roller-coaster ride on this night, much like his team.
Indeed, the 31-year-old had a direct influence on three goals in the game. Unfortunately for the Maple Leafs, only one counted in their favor.
Toronto’s strange evening began when it was up 2-0 midway through the first period. When Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov was being taken down while driving to the Toronto net, he centered the puck off Rielly’s blade and past Woll to put the hosts on the scoreboard.
In soccer terms, it would have been dubbed an own goal.
Rielly would make amends at 10:56 of the third period when his shot from near the right boards was blockered away by Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky off Florida defenseman Seth Jones and into the net, tying the game 4-4 and forcing overtime.
Cue Marchand’s overtime heroics, with a little help from the puck deflecting off Rielly and blooping into the net.
Rielly has been with the Maple Leafs since the 2013-14 season, playing 873 games in the regular season and 66 in the postseason. In that time, Toronto was 1-8 in playoff series before eliminating Ottawa in the first round this season. He’s been part of teams that have lost three Game 7s to the Boston Bruins. He’d pretty much seen it all.
Until Friday, that is.
“Stuff happens,” he said. “I mean, that’s how pucks are going in right now. It’s not just this series. It’s last series, it’s kind of happening all over the playoffs.”
Now it’s time to see if the Maple Leafs can bounce back.
In past years, a loss like this would have ignited a free fall. It would have caused them to lose ensuing games, confidence and, more often than not, the ability to score.
But these Maple Leafs have looked different under coach Craig Berube.
When Ottawa tied Game 6 in the first round with a bank shot off goalie Anthony Stolarz in the third period, Max Pacioretty scored the go-ahead goal less than two minutes later in a 4-2 Toronto victory.
In Game 2 against the Panthers on Wednesday, Mitch Marner scored the winning goal in a 4-3 victory just 17 seconds after the Panthers had tied the game early in the third.
These were not the types of contests the Maple Leafs would win in past seasons. This spring, they have been.
Now comes the biggest litmus test of all.
Had they scored in overtime, an argument could be made that it would have been one of the biggest goals in recent Maple Leafs history, putting them one win away from the Eastern Conference Final. Instead, they were left to ponder what might have been.
Berube’s message has been clear: No matter how many times you literally and figuratively get knocked down, you have to stay the course. Count on the players being told that again prior to Game 4.
At the same time, to achieve that goal, Woll will have to be better. The Maple Leafs goalie was shaky all night, giving up juicy rebounds, mishandling pucks behind the net and fighting to find the correct angles.
“You just shake it off,” Woll said afterward. “Bounces go both ways. That’s hockey.”
Too many times in the past decade, such occurrences would spur a postseason downward spiral for Rielly and the Maple Leafs.
Is this edition truly different, as some of the players have said?
We’re about to find out if those claims are fact or fiction.
