Leafs eliminate Lightning in Game 6, advance to 2nd round for first ti…

This is precisely the moment John Tavares envisioned when he signed with his boyhood Toronto Maple Leafs on Canada Day during the summer of 2018. After a 19-year drought, the Maple Leafs are off to the second round of the playoffs; the curse that has plagued the seven-year iteration of the franchise defined by Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and Tavares is now over.

Tavares scored the overtime winner to eliminate the three-time conference champion Tampa Bay Lightning and Toronto’s usually stoic captain erupted after his shot hit Darren Raddysh’s skates and trickled over the line for the 2-1 franchise-altering goal.

The prospect of seven consecutive first-round losses would be unbearable, it would have consequences that would ripple through the Maple Leafs’ organization and Tavares, who had bore witness to four consecutive exits in the early days of spring, sent his hands into the sky as if to thank a higher power for finally breaking through the wall.

In some ways, this was Tavares’ destiny. The last time the Maple Leafs advanced, Tavares was a prodigy for the Greater Toronto Hockey League’s Toronto Marlboros, a youth club that bears the same insignia as the AHL’s Toronto Marlies, with dozens of players graduating from their ranks into the NHL. For the better part of two decades — perhaps an indication of the depths that this hockey-mad country can reach — Tavares has been pitted against his Lightning counterpart Steven Stamkos, both 1990-born former youth wunderkinds from the Greater Toronto Area who were taken first overall in their OHL and NHL draft years before making an instant impact in the NHL.

Stamkos scored the game-tying goal Saturday, his biggest moment in a series where he was largely absent for his club, but his resume already includes two Stanley Cups and two Rocket Richard Trophies. At this moment, it’s now Tavares’ time…