Craziness from Maple Leafs, Jimmy Butler will likely impact Boston sports this spring

BOSTON -- Monday night was a crazy one in sports. And while the goings-on of the Miami Heat and the Toronto Maple Leafs aren't necessarily Boston-centric, the wild games that took place on Monday could have an impact on both the Bruins and the Celtics in the near future.

Let's start in the NBA, where Jimmy Butler had a performance for the ages in Miami's unlikely Game 4 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks. Butler was utterly unstoppable, scoring 56 points (while also grabbing nine rebounds) to lead the Heat to a 119-114 victory, giving Miami a 3-1 series lead against the No. 1-seeded Bucks. The Heat had earned a 2-1 series lead after Giannis Antetokounmpo left Game 1 with an injury and missed the next two games. But on Monday he was back, so the ragtag story of the eight-seed Heat was set to expire.

Butler, though, ensured that didn't happen by putting on one of the best playoff performances ... ever.

The win was huge for Miami, but could also be massive for Boston. If the Heat can win one more game in that series -- and they'll get three chances to do it, including one more home game -- then it will eliminate the top-seeded Bucks from the postseason, thus giving the Celtics home-court advantage throughout the rest of the playoffs.

Of course, the Bucks are the Bucks, and Giannis and Giannis, and two of those games will be in Milwaukee, so nobody should be holding their breath in the greater Boston area. Not yet. There's also the element of the Heat and Butler being a problem for whichever teams end up facing them in the future.

From a Celtics perspective, though, they won't have to worry about Butler and the Heat until the conference finals. That was the round where a presumed Celtics-Bucks matchup awaited the world, but Monday night's game has shifted those expectations.

Then there's the hockey.

As you may or may not know, the Toronto Maple Leafs have kind of been the NHL's laughingstock for quite some time. They haven't won a playoff series since 2004, and they've had some epic collapses along the way. This particular graphic made the rounds on Monday night ... 

... and when the Lightning took a 4-1 lead over Toronto in Tampa Bay late in the second period, it appeared that some more comic doom awaited Toronto's team.

But then ... Toronto ... flipped the script? And somehow, the Maple Leafs did to the Lightning what the Bruins famously did to the Maple Leafs a decade ago, scoring three times in the third period to tie the game and force overtime, where they rode the momentum to a massive victory. It was, quite literally, unbelievable.

Instead of the schadenfreude shots of Leafs fans in misery, there were shots of ecstasy:

Nobody can really believe it, especially in Boston, where the memories of "Bergeron! Bergeron! Bergeron!" remain fresh even 10 years later.

But everybody has to believe it, and the Bruins are likely to be meeting these new-era, suddenly confident, suddenly capable Maple Leafs very soon.

If the Bruins can finish off the Panthers, and if the Maple Leafs can finish off the Lightning (admittedly, a bigger "if" exists there, despite Monday's comeback), then Toronto and Boston will be meeting in the second round of the playoffs.

Previously, such a meeting would elicit laughter and joy in the streets of Boston. Though Toronto and Boston went almost 40 years without seeing each other in the postseason, they got quite acquainted with each other over the past decade, meeting in the first round of the playoffs in 2013, 2018, and 2019. The Bruins won all three of those series, all of which went to Game 7.

In 2013, there was the aforementioned blown 4-1 lead in the third period in Boston. That one's still funny.

In 2018, the Leafs actually grabbed a 1-0 lead and a 2-1 lead in the first period and led 4-3 after two periods in Game 7 in Boston ... only to get absolutely bum-rushed in the third and lose 7-4. Frederik Anderson allowed six goals in the win-or-go-home matchup.

A year later, the Leafs actually took a 3-2 series lead into Game 6 on home ice ... but mustered just 24 shots on goal and lost 4-2. That set up a Game 7 in Boston, where the Leafs fulfilled their destiny by once again losing in the first round by a non-competitive final score of 5-1.

Since then, the Leafs lost a qualifying-round playoff series to Columbus in the bubble, then lost in seven games in a first-round series vs. Montreal in 2021, and then ... lost in seven games to the Lightning in the first round last year.

Now, listen: When you lay it all out like that, then it seems like the Leafs might still find a way to lose this particular series in seven games, despite the 3-1 lead. Understandable. Changing hearts and minds takes a lot of time. But it did feel like a dam of sorts broke on Monday night, as the Leafs were on the winning side of the ultra-rare and incredibly shocking comeback. The confidence that team will have riding into Game 5 at home will be immense.

And that's where the Bruins enter the picture. Boston has obviously had its hands full with a feisty Florida team but has still managed to take a 3-1 series lead despite missing Patrice Bergeron for the entire series and David Krejci for half of it. Even with those top two centermen potentially returning, a Leafs team coming off a playoff series win for the first time in two decades will be a whole lot to handle.

Of course, Boston handled Toronto decently well in the regular season, because Boston handled everybody decently well while racking up a record number of wins and points. But the Leafs did snag a 2-1 win over Boston early in the year and pushed the Bruins to overtime in an early April meeting in Boston. So Toronto won't be trembling at the sight of the Bruins, and that group of Maple Leafs will have something that no Toronto teams have had behind them in a long time: Genuine confidence.

If the Leafs can go into the building of the two-time Stanley Cup-winning Lightning and stun them with a three-goal third-period comeback, then they're capable of going on a long run. It'll (likely) be up to the Bruins to try to stop that.

So while the big events in sports on Monday didn't necessarily tie directly to the Bruins or Celtics, it seems like it will only be a matter of time before the ripple effect impacts both of Boston's championship-driven teams this spring.

You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.