Battle of Ontario: Stars shine for Leafs in convincing Game 1 victory over Senators

Mitch Marner had a goal and two assists as the Toronto Maple Leafs dumped the Ottawa Senators 6-2 to take Game 1 of their first-round playoff series Sunday.

William Nylander and John Tavares, with a goal and an assist each, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Morgan Rielly and Matthew Knies also scored for Toronto. Anthony Stolarz made 31 saves. Auston Matthews had two assists.

Drake Batherson and Ridly Greig replied for Ottawa, which got 18 stops from Linus Ullmark.

The best-of-seven matchup continues Tuesday with Game 2 at Scotiabank Arena before shifting to the nation's capital.

The series opener marked the first playoff Battle of Ontario showdown in exactly 21 years when Toronto bested Ottawa 4-1 in Game 7 on April 20, 2004.

The teams went in opposite directions after that, with Ottawa enjoying a long run of success, including a trip to the 2007 Stanley Cup final, while Toronto made the post-season just once between 2006 and 2016.

The Leafs, who downed the Senators four times in the playoffs across a five-year stretch in the early 2000s, returned to the NHL's spring dance in 2017 — the last time the Senators made the post-season — with a young core led by Matthews, Marner and Nylander.

The Senators' rebuild, meanwhile, took a lot longer than expected but finally gained traction in 2024-25. Ottawa captain Brady Tkachuk made his playoff debut Sunday in his seventh campaign.

Toronto, which has one series victory in nine tries in the Matthews-Marner era, opened the scoring at 7:09 of the first period when Ekman-Larsson fired past Ullmark's glove to ignite the rink and send fans gathered outdoors in Maple Leaf Square into a frenzy.

Senators defenceman Jake Sanderson cleared a puck off his goal line later in the period, but Marner took a stretch pass from Matthews moments later and roofed a shot at 12:18 for a 2-0 lead.

Ottawa got on the board exactly four minutes later when Batherson was fastest to a rebound Stolarz was unable to smother.

The Leafs goaltender stopped Tkachuk on a breakaway early in the second before the Leafs' power play when to work when Tavares collected his own rebound at 4:07 to make it 3-1.

The Senators got in more penalty trouble later in the period, and Toronto struck three seconds into a two-man advantage when Nylander ripped his team's fourth goal on just 10 shots at 7:19.

Fabian Zetterlund had a great opportunity on an Ottawa power play late in the period, but Stolarz was there to keep the score at 4-1 through 40 minutes.

Greig got the Senators back within two exactly four minutes into the third on a delayed penalty, but Rielly made it 5-2 just 45 seconds later on a shot that hit a Senators player in front.

Knies rounded out the scoring on another power play at 13:13 to put a bow on an impressive Game 1 performance from the Atlantic Division winners.

Different perspective, keeping focus

Leafs defenceman Brandon Carlo's only up-close experience with Toronto head coach Craig Berube before being acquired ahead of the NHL trade deadline from Boston was watching the veteran bench boss lift the Cup when his St. Louis Blues beat the Bruins in Game 7 in 2019.

"I only had that image of him in TD Garden beating us," Carlo said. "But there's a reason why that happened, and I think he's a big part of it. I've loved his coaching and just the way that he is so relatable."

Every playoff matchup is under a microscope. The Battle of Ontario is a different animal.

"There's pressure," said Ottawa head coach Travis Green, whose playing career included a stint with the Leafs in the early 2000s. "Especially in this series, there's outside pressure, there's outside noise. I remember it from playing here how much pressure there is, but that's the exciting part."

"It was fun — a lot of fun," he added. "Hopefully it's fun again."