MONTREAL — There’s just over three minutes to play in the first period of a game the Montreal Canadiens are leading 2-0 when Mike Matheson starts the breakout.

Florian Xhekaj and Josh Anderson crisscross through the dots, Jake Evans fills the next lane, and eventually Matheson arrives in the neutral zone with all three of them and defence partner Noah Dobson ahead of him and pushing all five Toronto Maple Leafs back. He sees everyone is moving north and instead of attempting a tape-to-tape pass to one of them, he flips the puck deep into Toronto’s end from his side of centre.

On this sequence Matheson made two quick calculations, and both were correct: that the risk of passing and committing a turnover in this situation far outweighed the possibility of passing and generating a rush chan

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