The Maple Leafs finished in third place and faced the Montreal Canadiens in the opening round of the playoffs. The Canadiens of 1944–45 were a record-breaking, powerhouse hockey team. Going into the playoffs, their coach, Dick Irvin, declared them as the greatest team to have ever played in the NHL. The Montreal club had the top three point leaders in the league, placed 5 of the 6 positions on the first All-Star team, Maurice Richard had scored his famous 50 goals in 50 games, Montreal had finished 28 points ahead of Toronto and scored almost a goal-per-game more. As of 2009, Montreal's regular season winning percentage for 1944–45 is the fifth highest in NHL history and the year previously they had achieved the second highest in history and won the Stanley Cup. The Leafs were given little chance of winning the series. As with all NHL playoff series of the era, the winner was the first team to win four games of a best-of-seven. Going into the series, Hap Day made a critical decision to predominantly play only two lines of his best players to compensate for the Canadiens' depth in talent. The first game was in Montreal and no goals were scored for the first two periods. In the third period, with just twenty-two seconds remaining and everyone anticipating overtime, Ted Kennedy banked a backhand shot off the goalpost which then rebounded off goaltender Bill Durnan's pads and into the net to win the game 1–0. The goal shocked the Montreal team, especially as the famed "Punch Line" had been held scoreless. In the second game, also in Montreal, Kennedy struck again only four minutes into the first period scoring the all-important first goal to put the Toronto ahead by 1–0. Toronto went on to win the game 3–2 and were able to leave Montreal with an unexpected 2–0 series lead. Montreal won the next game in Toronto 4–1. In the fourth game in Toronto, Montreal got off to a quick start and led 2–0 on goals by Elmer Lach and Richard, his first of the series, before the game was three minutes old. In the second period, Kennedy set up Mel Hill to get Toronto back in the game and the Leafs went on to win in overtime. As Toronto needed only one more victory to win the series, Montreal was facing elimination in game five in Montreal.