Just 26 seconds into the man advantage, Marchand struck - taking a feed from Torey Krug and flipping the puck past Toronto netminder Frederik Andersen at 5:28 to give Boston a 1-0 lead.

Pastrnak's confidence and his line's stellar play in Game 1 suggests the Bruins will be able to keep up with the Leafs if the series becomes a high-scoring affair. Andreas Johnsson and Dominic Moore took regular turns in drills and are available while it appeared Matt Martin and Josh Leivo will continue watching games from the press box.

The Toronto Maple Leafs survived losing all of the puck battles, at first, but they could not survive getting whipped on special teams.

"It's kind of insane how things worked out, " forward Brad Marchand said after practice Wednesday.

Power-play opportunities_Toronto 0 of 3; Boston 3 of 6. At the end of the day, we want to win the hockey game, obviously.

A unsafe boarding hit from Toronto center Nazem Kadri against Tommy Wingels tossed Kadri from the game and gave Boston another five minutes on the power play - leading to Krejci's goal at 11:29 to close out the scoring.

"They were good", said Babcock. We talked about having young guys in there, it's how they handle it.

Pastrnak scored to make it 3-1 from Marchand and Bergeron late in the second period, with Babcock caught on an icing and the Tomas Plekanec line was terribly overmatched, and Bergeron winning an offensive zone faceoff rather easily. For the first 15 minutes of the game they scarcely allowed the Leafs to draw a breath. "That's what it looked like to me", Cassidy said after the victory.

In the opening game matchup between the great Patrice Bergeron line and the great Auston Matthews line, there wasn't much of a match at all. However, it is tough to judge anything based on the season series after all the irregularities that occurred in the four games. Mostly, the Leafs looked like accountants who had wandered into a biker bar at full brawl. The Bruins won 5-1, and deserved it. The Leafs did not have even one shot on goal during five-on-five play and were fortunate to be down only one goal.

It was just the sort of goal teams need to get traction in the playoffs - one of the worker bees coming through when the stars are shut down.

"We tried to simplify some more and start from the beginning".

Here are some other things to look for from the first-round playoff series between the Bruins and Maple Leafs.

The game continued to shift towards Toronto in the second, with strong PK shifts from Chara and Noel Acciari tightening up the crease and stymying a pair of Leafs power-play bids in the period.

Marchand didn't take a penalty in Game 1.

The Bruins pounced on the Leafs immediately and David Backes made it two power-play goals in as many opportunities at 15:43 by out-fighting Leafs defenceman Ron Hainsey for a rebound.

The Leafs were beaten 5-1 in Game 1 and they were significantly outplayed, outworked, outthought, and out-disciplined by the Bruins and that may be being kind. With the score 4-1 in the third Tommy Wingels, who ended the second period holding Mitch Marner in a headlock, elbowed Marner in the face along the boards and fell down.