With 18 games to go, the Maple Leafs are two points behind the Florida for first place in the Atlantic (with a game in hand), and wouldn’t you know it, they play them tonight with an opportunity to get a leg up on a reeling Panthers team (7:00 p.m. EST, TSN4).
This is the first of three matchups against the Panthers over the Leafs‘ next 13 games, and they will likely go a long way to deciding who wins the division.
In their first matchup of the season series, the Panthers won 5-1 in a game that included an empty-netter and a Leafs lineup with all of Fraser Minten, Nikita Grebenkin, Alex Nylander, Alex Steeves, and Connor Dewar dressed.
This time around, the Leafs are facing a Panthers team with far more absences as Matthew Tkachuk, Brad Marchand, and Aaron Ekblad (suspension) are all out. They just blew a 2-0 lead in the third period to lose in regulation to the Bruins (although they were on a six-game winning streak before then) and look to be dressing a second line that includes Matthew Samoskevich and Evan Rodrigues. The Panthers are still very a good team, to be sure, as Aleksander Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Sergei Bobrosvky, and Gustav Forsling are all playing tonight. This isn’t a pushover lineup, but there are some clear vulnerabilities.
On the Leafs‘ side, they have a fully healthy forward group available unless you rate Max Pacioretty as a top 12 forward. On defense, Chris Tanev is a game-time decision, and he would be a massive loss/return, but everyone else is available. The new additions have had nearly a week to settle in with the team, organization, and city. This is more or less as healthy as the team can get (if Tanev dresses). They are also finally home after playing all of two home games over the last month and a half.
If we look at the end of Leafs‘ recent road trip, they didn’t play particularly well in a shootout win against Utah, and the ice was tilted against them in their previous losses against Colorado and Vegas. In the period and change before those two away losses, they blew a 2-0 lead at home to the San Jose Sharks.
This isn’t just a big game in the standings; it’s an important game back at home to get the team’s game trending back in the right direction. Add in that it’s Florida across the way, the team is relatively healthy, and the importance in the standings; this is as big of a regular season game as we’ve had to date in 2025.
Let’s see who steps up and delivers.
Game Day Quotes
Max Domi on the meaning of potentially winning the Atlantic Division:
That shit doesn’t matter to us. We are trying to beat every team we are playing against. Every game is just as important. We’ll focus day-by-day and game-by-game. It’s a good test tonight against the defending champs, so it is going to be a fun one.
Jake McCabe on the meaning of tonight’s game:
We have these guys a few more times here before the end of the year. We’re chasing them in the standings right now. We want to be in first place in our division. It’s a big game in that sense.
… They’ve been to two straight finals. They have been at the top of the league for a significant period of time. Credit to them. It is not an easy game to play the way they do night in and night out. That is what most teams are chasing.
We have shown throughout the course of the year that we can play that stifling game. That is what we are trying to get to in the last month of the year. Everyone wants to be playing their best hockey at the end of the year going into the playoffs. We are no different.
McCabe on the team’s recent defensive play:
It is definitely something we have been focusing on improving. We have shown this year that we can be elite defensively. We have gotten off track a little bit, but I have no doubt in our group that we can get back to where we were earlier in the year.
Carig Berube on the type of challenge the Leafs will face tonight:
Florida brings that certain game element — hard forechecking team, in your face all game, and there is not a lot of room out there. That is what I expect. They are going to dump pucks in and forecheck. They are tight on you. They don’t give you a lot of time and space out there.
It is going to be a battle. On your wall battles, you need close support. You have to simplify the game against this team.
Berube on the team’s recent form:
In the last handful of games, we have gotten away from our identity a little bit in terms of putting pucks in deep, forechecking, and going to work. We are trying to get that dialed back in here and play that north-south game.
Paul Maurice on the Leafs’ deadline additions:
Two veteran players. When you look league-wide, everybody in the top three in each division pretty much did the same thing — bring in some guys who have played playoff hockey or play a playoff style of hockey. It is what we did. It is what everybody did.
Those two guys are good at it. We have seen a lot of Carlo over the years. Two great, great series. He played very well in them. They were heavy and hard.
It makes sense. The East has kind of transitioned to that. You are seeing more and more of that in the East. It is a little bit of a different style in the West. It’ll be good for them.
Maurice on whether he is expecting a playoff-like intensity in this game, given the divisional stakes:
We wouldn’t like the intensity to change necessarily based on what is on the line. We would like to play as hard as we possibly can every night.
I am trying to make sure I tell you the truth. You want to finish first because you can, but it doesn’t necessarily gain you an easier route. We would not have picked Boston two years ago in the first round in a million years. It is probably why we got to where we got to last year.
We will gameplan what happens after that. You will find that the two teams that finish in the wildcard will have been playing playoff hockey for three months. The idea that the standings would tell you how hard that first series would be is foolish.
We are not going to play harder tonight because it could be for first place. We should be playing as hard as we can every night. That is the way we are rolling here.
Head-to-Head Stats: Maple Leafs (39-22-3) vs. Florida Panthers (40-22-3)
In the 2024-25 regular season statistics, Florida holds the advantage in three out of five offensive categories and four out of five defensive categories.
Toronto Maple Leafs Projected Lines
Forwards
#23 Matthew Knies — #34 Auston Matthews — #16 Mitch Marner
#19 Calle Jarnkrok — #91 John Tavares — #88 William Nylander
#74 Bobby McMann — #24 Scott Laughton — #11 Max Domi
#29 Pontus Holmberg — #64 David Kampf — #18 Steven Lorentz
Defensemen
#22 Jake McCabe — #8 Chris Tanev
#44 Morgan Rielly — #25 Brandon Carlo
#2 Simon Benoit — #95 Oliver Ekman-Larsson
Goaltenders
Starter: #41 Anthony Stolarz
#60 Joseph Woll
Extras: Philippe Myers, Nick Robertson
Injured (LTIR): Jani Hakanpää, Max Pacioretty
Florida Panthers Projected Lines
Forwards
#23 Carter Verhaeghe — #16 Aleksander Barkov — #13 Sam Reinhart
#25 Mackie Samoskevich — #9 Sam Bennett — #17 Evan Rodrigues
#27 Eetu Luostarinen — #15 Anton Lundell — #70 Jesper Boqvist
#10 AJ Greer — #8 Nico Sturm — #12 Jonah Gadjovich
Defensemen
#42 Gustav Forsling — #3 Seth Jones
#77 Niko Mikkola — #7 Dmitry Kulikov
#26 Uvis Balinskis — #88 Nate Schmidt
Goaltenders
Starter: #72 Sergei Bobrovsky
#41 Vitek Vanecek
Injured/Out: Aaron Ekblad, Brad Marchand, Matthew Tkachuk
