The Maple Leafs have life. Toronto followed up a woeful Game 1 performance against the Tampa Bay Lightning with a fantastic showing Thursday, taking Game 2 at Scotiabank Arena by a 7-2 final score. Here are three pivotal battlegrounds as the first-round series shifts to Tampa. Game 3 goes Saturday.

 

Point line vs. Brodie-McCabe

Stacked in the past, Tampa isn't overly deep up front after losing Ondrej Palat, Yanni Gourde, Barclay Goodrow, and Blake Coleman in recent offseasons.

These hits to the secondary scoring ranks have put additional pressure on the club's premier forwards. Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov, and Steven Stamkos tend to rise to the occasion, and they've done just that on the power play through two games, combining for three goals. Five-on-five action has been a different story, though, as Toronto's contained Tampa's top line.

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Game 2 win over Lightning shows that the Toronto Maple Leafs are Mitch Marner’s team

In 22 minutes together at five-on-five, Stamkos-Point-Kucherov has drawn even in goals (1-1) while trailing in shots on goal (15-11), total shot attempts (24-21), and high-danger attempts (8-2), according to Natural Stat Trick. Limiting them to this extent – minimized but not completely shut out – is a sizable victory being overshadowed by the extreme results of Games 1 and 2.

Point and Kucherov were too cute with the puck Thursday, several times making an extra deke on a zone entry or taking forever to shoot the puck. It didn't help Tampa that Leafs defenseman T.J. Brodie, who had an uncharacteristically sloppy Game 1, returned to his nearly mistake-free form.

In Game 1, the Point line faced Brodie and Jake McCabe for roughly two-thirds of their five-on-five shifts while the Justin Holl-Mark Giordano pairing handled the rest. Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe line-matched harder in Game 2, getting his shutdown duo of Brodie-McCabe out for nearly all Point shifts.

The David Kampf-centered fourth line also did a marvellous job Thursday against the Point line, even flipping the script by controlling play during a few shifts. Keefe must be over the moon about the Kampf line's body of work.

Question No. 1 for Games 3 and 4: Will Lightning coach Jon Cooper use the home-team perk of last change to separate the Point line from Brodie-McCabe as much as possible? Is he ready to play chess against Keefe?