Matthews shakes off eye injury, scores big goal for Maple Leafs in Game 6 win

SUNRISE, Fla. -- Auston Matthews’ entire world suddenly turned blurry.

The Toronto Maple Leafs forward had just been clipped in the eye by the stick of Florida Panthers forward Aleksander Barkov, which had made its way under his face shield midway through the second period of Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Second Round on Friday, and he began to panic.

He started squinting. It didn’t help. His teammates, the ice surface, the capacity crowd of 19,797 at Amerant Bank Arena, he couldn’t focus on any of them.

Understandably fretting at his condition, he was rushed by trainers to the dressing room.

All with his team’s season on the line.

It could have been one of the worst nights of his hockey career, not to mention his life, given the unknown state of the injury to his eye at that very second.

Instead, it turned out to be one of the best.

Not only did Matthews regain his clear vision after several minutes, he would rebound to score the winning goal in the third period en route to a 2-0 Maple Leafs victory. The win tied the Eastern Conference Second Round 3-3 and set up a winner-take-all Game 7 at Scotiabank Arena on Sunday (7:30 p.m. ET: CBC, TVAS, SN, TNT, truTV, MAX).

“I just caught it in the eye,” the Maple Leafs captain said, an ugly black welt beneath the left one a souvenir of the frightening incident. “So, it was a little scary there. I had trouble seeing, so they wanted to check it out in the room and let it calm down.”

Fortunately, it did.

“I was kind of able to get whatever kind of decent vision back and finally go out there,” Matthews said. “But they definitely wanted to make sure it was checked out and make sure it was all good.”

One period later, it was definitely that.

With the game still seeking its first goal and the Maple Leafs one shot away from elimination, Toronto forward Mitch Marner corralled a loose puck just outside the Florida blue line and slipped it to Matthews.

His eyesight now intact, he took a couple of strides to the top of the left face-off circle and unleashed his patented snap shot. To that point, he’d never scored a playoff goal against the Panthers in 10 previous games.

Until now.

When the puck went through the legs of Florida goalie Sergei Bobrovsky and into the back of the net, it did more than just give Toronto a 1-0 lead with 13:40 remaining in regulation.

Indeed, it gave Matthews a signature playoff moment that had previously been too far and few between.

He’d gone five games without a goal and had just two in 11 previous playoff games this spring. Prior to that he had 33 during the regular season, the fewest in his career, partially due to an upper-body injury that had plagued him all season. So many times he’d failed to be a difference-maker under the bright lights of the postseason stage.

And in this, his ninth NHL season, Toronto fans finally were running out of patience with him, so much so that he specifically was targeted with boos by the home crowd during the Maple Leafs’ moribund 6-1 loss in Game 5 on Wednesday. At one point in the third period, a disgusted fan threw a Matthews No. 34 jersey on the ice, a symbolic gesture, not to mention an unflattering one.

But he changed that narrative on Friday, at least for the time being, with the type of gutsy performance his teammates were in awe of.

“I mean, it’s such a huge, huge goal,” forward Max Pacioretty said. “You know, that’s a situation where no one wants to make a mistake. You could feel the tension on both sides there at that point in the game. And then just an unbelievable shot from an unbelievable player.

“That’s why he’s our captain.”

One who couldn’t help but feel relief when he saw the puck enter the net.

“It felt great,” Matthews said. “I’ve had some good opportunities all series, and so I’m going to keep shooting and keep believing that the next one’s going in.

“So, that one felt great.”

Not just for him, but for an entire Maple Leafs team that had many heroes on this night.

There was Pacioretty, the 36-year-old veteran who had Toronto’s second goal and has a total of eight in 16 career games in which his team was facing elimination.

There was Marner, a pending unrestricted free agent July 1, who stickhandled his way around questions about this possibly being his final game as a Maple Leaf to set up the winning goal.

There was forward Matthew Knies, who was noticeably hobbled by a first-period check by Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad and grinded through limited playing time the rest of the way. Coach Craig Berube said it was too early to know if Knies will be available for Game 7.

And there was goalie Joseph Woll, who made 22 saves for the shutout and looked calm, cool and collected in doing it.

Now it’s off to Game 7, a scenario that hasn’t treated the Maple Leafs kindly in recent times. Toronto has lost six consecutive Games 7s, an ominous history to be sure.

But Berube wasn’t part of those. Nor does he care. In fact, he has a shining pedigree in these situations, highlighted by the 4-1 victory by his St. Louis Blues against the host Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the 2019 Stanley Cup Final.

“They’re fun,” Berube said of Game 7s, all the while grinning from ear to ear.

Especially if Matthews and Marner continue to be the difference-makers the Maple Leafs need them to be.