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Matthew Knies of the Toronto Maple Leafs celebrates scoring a goal during the third period of Game One of the First Round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Ottawa Senators (Photo by Mark Blinch/NHLI via Getty Images)

Maple Leafs’ Killer Instinct Starts at the Faceoff Dot

Originally posted on The Hockey Writers | By The Old Prof | Last updated Apr 26, 2025 11:40 AM ET

For Toronto Maple Leafs fans, the moment felt eerily familiar. Exactly two years ago (almost to the day), Morgan Rielly scored a sudden overtime winner against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 3 by taking advantage of a clean faceoff win by Ryan O’Reilly, setting up a quick-release shot through traffic. Fast-forward to Thursday, and Simon Benoit delivered a strikingly similar play—capitalizing on a clean draw from Auston Matthews and rifling a shot past Linus Ullmark to win Game 3 against the Ottawa Senators.

Both goals came suddenly. Both felt like gut punches to the opposition. Both underscore a critical truth in the Stanley Cup Playoffs: winning faceoffs matters. These kinds of plays don’t just win games—they shift momentum, tilt series, and define champions.

Comparing Rielly’s Goal in 2023 to Benoit’s Goal in 2025

On Saturday night, April 22, 2023, Rielly, the longest-serving Maple Leafs player and a pillar of consistency on the blue line, scored 19:15 into overtime to give Toronto a dramatic 4-3 win. That night, O’Reilly won a clean offensive-zone faceoff back to Rielly, who fired a quick-release shot that beat Andrei Vasilevskiy. The puck floated in by the Lightning goalie’s right ear, and just like that, the Maple Leafs stole a game where they were second-best for long stretches. That goal gave Toronto a 2-1 lead in the series and a belief that they could finally push through. They did just that.

Fast-forward to April 2025, and Benoit—a physical, stay-at-home defender not typically known for his scoring touch—provided déjà vu. In Game 3 against Ottawa, Benoit scored the overtime winner in eerily similar fashion. After Matthews won a clean draw in the left faceoff circle, the puck bounced back to Benoit at the point. He let a one-timer go through traffic without hesitation, beating Senators goaltender Ullmark, who never had time to square up. The Maple Leafs took a 3-0 series lead, and Benoit—playing in just his third career playoff game—had his first NHL postseason goal.

[By the way, although it was before my time as a Maple Leafs fan, the echoes of this goal reverberate back to 2001. In Game 3 of that first-round series, depth defenseman Cory Cross scored early in overtime to lift the Maple Leafs to a 3-2 win over Ottawa. On Thursday, Benoit delivered a nearly identical script: again by a 3-2 margin, to push the Maple Leafs to the brink of a sweep. Both players are the perfect examples of unlikely heroes.]

The Common Thread: Winning Draws Is Part of Playoff Success

What ties these two goals together isn’t just their emotional weight or game-breaking impact, but a shared foundation: a faceoff win.

Both Rielly’s and Benoit’s overtime winners were set up by textbook draws won by elite faceoff men—O’Reilly in 2023, and Matthews in 2025. That’s no coincidence. It’s a direct result of the Maple Leafs’ strong identity at the faceoff dot, a strength that’s come into sharp focus during this series against the Senators.

The Maple Leafs have already scored goals that directly followed faceoff wins in the current series. The clean execution—from winning the puck to getting it on net quickly—has created a repeatable formula that’s hard to defend. The result is more than puck possession; it’s about turning possession into pressure and pressure into goals.

Are the Maple Leafs Developing Killer Instinct Through the Details?

Head coach Craig Berube touched on that mindset when he spoke about developing “killer instinct.” While the Maple Leafs haven’t always been successful in closing out series—just 2-13 in potential clinching games since 2004—they’ve shown a sharpened edge lately. Part of that edge is doing the little things right: being dialed in for every draw, every puck battle, every moment.

That’s where Benoit’s goal, like Rielly’s before it, becomes more than just a highlight. It’s a snapshot of a team that’s evolving. A team that now has veterans like Brandon Carlo, who knows the value of ending series early, and leaders like Matthews and John Tavares, who have been through the heartbreak and are learning how to win the hard way.

A New Chapter in the Maple Leafs’ Playoff Story?

Like Rielly’s goal helped shift the emotional tide two years ago, Benoit’s strike symbolizes something bigger: a team learning how to finish. As Carlo noted recently, the immediate question is whether the Maple Leafs can finish this series tonight and “turn rest into a weapon.”

If they can do just that tonight in Game 4, the Maple Leafs will secure their first playoff sweep since 2001. Coincidentally, that sweep was also against the Senators. If this Maple Leafs team can do so, it can take another step in rewriting its postseason narrative.