No Matthews, no problem as Knies salvages Maple Leafs season in OT

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We interrupt this teardown of the Maple Leafs for Game 6 Thursday in Toronto.

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Yes, it might be just postponing the inevitable, but few Leaf teams have gone into an elimination game with slimmer odds and lived to fight another day. Never mind that some Scotiabank Arena employees were exchanging their summer goodbye hugs after Game 4 and told to remove any personal items as the hammers were ready to swing on the $350-million renovations as soon as the Leafs were officially out.

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Matthew Knies won it 2-1 in overtime, but the bigger hero was goaltender Joseph Woll.

Now only trailing 3-2 in the best of seven, why not think they could force it back to Boston again on Saturday, just to stir the bean pot. Now it’s Boston which has some pressure on it, having let a 3-1 series lead on underdog Florida get away from them last year.

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Tuesday’s welcome win comes on an auspicious anniversary for club president Brendan Shanahan. Eight years ago to the day, he was sequestered with other non-playoff NHL general managers at the draft lottery in Toronto.

The last-place Leafs won and got crown jewel Auston Matthews for what would become their Core Four. Matthews was not in Game 5 because of his mystery ailment — evidently not a viral-like illness, rather some form of physical soreness — but his team just bought the 69-goal scorer more time to get healthy.

The rest of the Core Four picked up Matthews on Tuesday, even if they didn’t cash in on scoring opportunities. Mitch Marner, with the weight of the world on him after Game 4, assisted on Toronto’s first goal and looked loose again.

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William Nylander, in his second game back in the series, had a partial breakaway pass from Joel Edmundson out of the penalty box and struck iron. The Bruins were unable to track him on a couple of his circles in their zone.

John Tavares flubbed some chances around the blue paint, but was crashing into everything black and gold, including a wild goal-mouth scrum at the end of the second period. What the Leafs lacked on the draw without Matthews, Max Domi replaced with 10 wins in the first period, looking comfortable back in the middle with Marner in the former’s absence.

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Winning this series is still a long shot. Only 33 teams since 1939 have climbed from the 1-3 deficit all the way back, while 306 have not. And if the Leafs somehow get to a seventh game at TD Garden, Boston has won that deciding match three times at home, twice after the Leafs won two to extend the series to the max.

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But they are a game closer to making it happen. And coach Sheldon Keefe told anyone who would listen that the Leafs just needed to bury a puck or two to restore the confidence of the league’s No. 2 offence. Jake McCabe did that in the first period, the first goal Jeremy Swayman had allowed in the opening period and a rare lead for Toronto in any contest versus Boston this season.

The Leafs also made a change in goal, putting Boston College product Joseph Woll on the hot seat. Had defenceman Simon Benoit not had an unfortunate bounce off a Bruin skate trying to clear, Trent Frederic wouldn’t have scored against his St. Louis school chum, though Woll atoned for that with a huge stretch-pad save on the same Bruin.

That improved the Leafs to 36-19-2 without Matthews in the lineup, though his fellow Arizonan Knies did a pretty good impression.

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