The Washington Capitals are moving on to the second round

With No. 14's return, the Leafs coincidentally climbed all the way to 14th in the overall standings.

Game 5 saw an overtime victor by Justin Williams. Not only did it bounce right into the danger area right in front of the bench, it went to the Maple Leafs' leading scorer in Auston Matthews.

Senators 3, Bruins 2 • Clarke MacArthur scored a power-play goal 6:30 into overtime and Ottawa beat host Boston to win its first-round playoff series in six games. The Leafs' speed gave them fits for the whole series.

Head coach Mike Babcock echoed Lamoriello's sentiments, saying that it will be more hard for the Leafs to sneak up on the competition next season and that the club will have to improve internally and externally to take another step towards being a Stanley Cup contender. They got both in this game and sat ten minutes away from forcing a one-game-takes-all scenario.

"We were the favourites going in", said Capitals coach Barry Trotz.

"This is a tough fought series".

"We didn't push them", said Babcock, talking about most of the third period and the overtime.

The 19-year-old is heading back home to Arizona for some rest and relaxation following a rookie season that will likely result in the first Maple Leafs' Calder Trophy win in 51 years. This time around, second line wing Marcus Johansson played the hero. After the Leafs were done with the customary handshakes with the Caps, they gave the fans a stick salute.

"We've still got a ways to go", Kadri said of becoming a top team. "We got to find out where we're at and where our players are at".

Here's a hypothetical that shouldn't be lost on any of the men running this team: The task of building a victor in the next two seasons may end up being easier than three years down the road, when the Matthews-Nylander-Marner trio will probably be accounting for north of $20-million in payroll.

The top building block, of course, is centre Auston Matthews, the No. 1 pick in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft who is the odds-on favorite to be chosen the rookie of the year following a 40-goal, 69-point season.

Leafs complete its regular season schedule as the first team in National Hockey League history to have six different rookies play at least 70 games.

Nashville held Chicago to three goals over the four-game series, including shutouts in games one and two.

"If you want to score and you want to win, you have to keep doing what we've been doing", Johansson said. "We don't know what is going to be available (over the summer), this is a unique year with expansion, we don't know what can and can't be done". Every one of us is proud of each other. "Everybody in this organization, the city of Toronto, everybody's excited for the future of what this team could bring". We're climbing, though. We're on our way up, the future is bright for us. "When you look around the room after the game, sitting in here, I think we gave it our all".

"We proved a lot people wrong".

The Capitals' scoring was quite balanced in this series, too.

When Mike Babcock signed his 8 year contract to be head coach in the hockey capital of the world in May of 2015, he said simply "there's pain coming".

"Our young guys are good", he ultimately concluded. For a moment his second-period marker Sunday felt like a Game 7 was a foregone conclusion.

"If you're not from Toronto, you don't know how spectacular it is", he said. You have to sacrifice your body to have success. "Then you get into hypotheticals". "You still have to be in".

The Maple Leafs have been to the dance. He arrived in a trade with the Anaheim Ducks and showed in his first full season as a No. 1 goaltender that he is an all-star quality one.