In a reversal of the script from two years ago, the Toronto Maple Leafs are the ones headed to Florida with a 2-0 series lead.
It is uncharted territory for a couple of generations of Leafs fans, as the team has not led a second-round series by a 2-0 margin since 1987. Not many before the series would have predicted that Toronto would have this edge through two games, but after playing an excellent game to kick off the series, the Leafs took a solid punch from Florida in Game 2, battled adversity, and scratched out a gritty 4-3 win. The betting wisdom now changes from Florida as the prohibitive favorites to the Maple Leafs with the edge.
Let’s break down what it means for the series:
Notable Performances From Game 2
The matchup of the two teams’ top lines — Aleksander Barkov, Carter Verhaeghe, and Sam Reinhart against Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and Matthew Knies — summed up Game 2 in many ways. When those two lines were up against each other at five-on-five in Game 2 (they logged 12:13 of that time), shot attempts were decisively in Florida’s favour, but they did not score. The Matthews line continued to play tight-checking hockey while playing a lot in their own zone. The Leafs will need more offense from Matthews in particular, but while Knies was a hero offensively in Game 1, Marner was the hero in Game 2, scoring the game-winning goal on the wobbly knuckler that made its way past Bobrovsky just as Florida had tied it in the third. As a result, five-on-five goals in the line one matchup minutes were 1-0 for Toronto, and the matchup sits at 3-0 in favour of Toronto through two games.
Right now, the Leafs can stomach the top lines fighting to a draw because Florida’s second line is producing nothing at five-on-five, and Toronto’s second line has one of the best players in the NHL playoffs on it. The Panthers’ second line with Matt Tkachuk and Sam Bennett accomplished very little in this game, with Tkachuk still clearly hampered by the ailment that held him out at the end of the season, and Bennett unable to build on his increased physical notoriety (the Leafs largely ignored him). Meanwhile, William Nylander dazzled again with a great finish on the game’s second goal, off a sweet pass from Max Pacioretty. Pacioretty also scored a huge power-play goal on a deflection, now has three straight two-point games in the playoffs, and sits at six points, nearly half as many points as he did in the entire regular season. John Tavares won 59% of his faceoffs, as the Leafs’ dominance in the dot is becoming a quietly huge storyline in this series.
The second line did get scored on by Florida’s third line to begin the second period; Berube’s matchup switch, where those two lines started each period against each other, did not go totally smoothly (we’ll get to the Florida third line shortly).
The Leafs’ checking line, which draws some matchups against that group, did have a bounce-back performance. Parts of the line scored an important goal in the late second period; Scott Laughton made a smart play at center to free up the puck from his check, finished off by Steven Lorentz dishing a slick feed to Max Domi for a one-timer goal. The work the checking line did didn’t necessarily show up in the underlying metrics, but there were positive shifts where they pushed the puck deep and created some chaos in front. Laughton also crushed Evan Rodrigues from behind and somehow left the team unscathed from a penalty standpoint initially (a make-up call later followed), continuing to show that the Leafs can play on the line physically in this series, too.
The final unit of Bobby McMann, Domi, and Pontus Holmberg continues to see limited ice time but posts solid results. McMann and Holmberg out-shot and out-attempted the Panthers while on ice and generated some moments. McMann drew the game’s first penalty using his speed and then got a rush chance through the neutral zone for the same reason, turned aside by a hard-challenging Sergei Bobrovsky (he probably could’ve pulled it around Bob with McMann’s speed and the time and space available). Holmberg took a penalty during a sequence where there were possible calls both ways and the referees decided to pick on Holmberg, but the Leafs killed it off.
Right now, the 12 forwards in the Leafs’ lineup make sense. All of them are contributing something within their roles, and Craig Berube has a good sense of how to use them.
On defense, it was a similar story to Game 1. Chris Tanev and Jake McCabe led the way in ice time and were soundly outpossessed in a territorial sense, but they played heavy minutes at five-on-five and on the PK against elite players and did not allow a five-on-five goal. That’s a job well done from them. McCabe also earned a primary assist on the Marner goal and saved maybe the last best chance the Panthers got to tie it by sweeping the puck out of the crease in the third period with his glove.
The rest of the defense saw a different allocation of minutes from Game 1. Morgan Rielly played the third-most while Oliver Ekman-Larsson played the least, although both found the scoresheet. As he has done throughout the series so far, Rielly again picked his spot well to active into the play and made a solid pass to set up the Domi goal. A deft stick from OEL broke up a Panthers play and got it out, leading to the transition opportunity that ended in Nylander’s goal.
Both Rielly and OEL were also on for goals against alongside their partners. Rielly turned the puck over under forechecking pressure and chased the play up the wall, leading to the 2-1 Marchand goal. Ekman-Larsson and Simon Benoit were a little scrambled on the third Florida goal that tied the game, caught puck-watching as Anton Lundell snuck back-door and received Aaron Ekblad’s pass through OEL/Benoit. Much like with the forwards, it wasn’t a perfect night, but the Leafs did enough, and Berube/Mike Van Ryan seem to have a solid feel for managing the blue line while varying the usage as needed night to night.
In net, Joseph Woll‘s play got stronger as the game went along. He spat out some rebounds in the early going and allowed two stoppable goals; the first goal, from Barkov on the power play, was a wrist shot from the outside that needed to be stopped. However, Woll settled in as the game went along, and in the end, he made some big saves, none bigger than his save at the post against Mackie Samoskevich in the third period, stretching to his right and getting it with his toe. Woll has all of the talent to get the job done and has a real chance to settle in/clean up the odd misstep as he gets back into the rhythm of starting, which is a scary proposition for the Panthers to consider.
Storylines for Game 3
1. Who wins the special teams battle? If you told me before the series started that special teams goals would be +1 for Florida through two games, I’d have said, “Hopefully the Leafs got one game out of it.” That they won both games is a pleasant surprise. Most Leafs fans feel good about the team’s five-on-five play through two games — their defending in-zone while releasing a forward high, chipping-and-chasing in behind the aggressive Florida press, and activating defensemen into the rush to burn the Panthers off the counter over and over again. But the special teams show room for improvement.
Toronto’s PP finally broke through against Florida, scoring at the end of the third try in the first period (second unit), which turned out to be their last opportunity of the game. Not much has changed here for the top unit; the focus needs to be on quicker puck movement to beat Florida’s initial puck pressure and take the puck down low, or tee up shots from up high and drive the net. The Leafs’ top unit has been too deliberate in their decision-making and not direct enough in getting pucks to the net. That needs to be an adjustment for Game 3.
On the penalty kill, the Maple Leafs have given up two goals in two games, but it’s hard to dislike much of what they’ve done on the kill. The Game 1 goal was a point shot through traffic, and the Game 2 goal was a wrist shot from the wall with no screen in front. If the Leafs can keep doing what they’re doing and get a couple more saves, they’ve got a 100% night on the PK coming.
2. Can the Florida third line be stopped? Through two games, the best line for the Panthers has been the third line with Anton Lundell centering Brad Marchand and Eetu Luostarinen. In the middle-six matchups (first Laughton’s line, then Tavares’), they have been exceptional in their minutes, controlling play and out-scoring Toronto 4-1. In all other five-on-five game states, the goal totals are 7-1 in Toronto’s favour. The effectiveness of the Lundell line has kept the Panthers in these first two games.
One could argue that if the Panthers get other lines going, they can win this series, but the flip side of the argument is that if Berube can come up with a solution for the Lundell line, the Panthers are in serious trouble.
As Paul Maurice takes over last change, we can assume that Berube will give the Matthews line a decent chunk of defensive-zone starts, and after them, it will probably fall on the shoulders of the Laughton line. Does that lead them into a clash with the Lundell line, or will Lundell’s line start more in the defensive zone, leading them into more matchups with the Tavares/Nylander line? Either way, whoever finds themselves against this group has to find ways to keep them off the scoresheet, which begins with protecting the front of the net better and managing the puck in the defensive zone better as well. Their goals have mostly come from around the net, and they’ve thrived off turnovers so far.
3. Can Auston Matthews make his stamp offensively? We complimented Matthews’ performance in this series on the defensive side earlier in this piece, but he only has one point through two games, a secondary assist. Matthews is capable of so much more, and the Leafs could really use (and might need) a game where he shoots a couple in the net. Matthews’ shooting accuracy has been an area of bewilderment; a legendary shooter has suddenly been unable to hit the net with any sort of frequency. He’s gotten many looks and keeps missing wide, in addition to missing an empty net from the neutral zone in each of the last two games.
Matthews’ only two playoff goals have been a goal set up on a silver platter by Marner, fired into a yawning cage, and the power play goal along the ice through a screen to kick off the scoring in Game 6 against Ottawa. Everything Matthews is providing defensively is great and necessary, but we’ve seen past versions of the player be good defensively and also lead the league in goals (it’s why he’s the highest-paid player in the league this season!). His goal-scoring has been down all season, so I don’t expect it to suddenly re-appear at a 70-goal pace in the playoffs, but the Leafs need him to pot a couple where he flat-out beats the goaltender, and the first game in Sunrise would be a hell of a time for it.
4. An iffy Sergei Bobrovsky. Sergei Bobrovsky was excellent for Florida when the Leafs played the Panthers in 2023. He allowed two goals against in each of the five games and posted a .943 save percentage. The Panthers’ defense in front of him clamped down as the series went along and made his life easier, but Bobrovsky was particularly special in the first two games in Toronto (Game 2 of that series was a magnificent Bobrovsky performance).
It’s a much different story in this series so far. Bobrovsky has stopped just 40 of 49 shots for an .816 SV%. He hasn’t given up many howlers (maybe Marner’s goal or Nylander’s series-opening goal verge on the description), but he usually comes up with more saves than this.
Part of the difference from 2023, especially when we look at the tail end of that series, was that the Leafs spent large stretches trying to attack in-zone off the cycle and were stymied by Florida’s expert net-front/slot defense. In this series, the Leafs have done a ton of attacking through the neutral zone off the rush, scoring two of their three five-on-five goals in that fashion in Game 2, as well as two goals in Game 1. Those are inherently higher percentage scoring opportunities.
This isn’t something totally new, as the Panthers gave up a lot of odd-man rush chances in the regular season as a trade-off to their aggressive forecheck, but Bobrovsky is usually good at stopping enough of those chances. He’s stopped a few in this series, but not enough, as Toronto’s finishing talent has won out (they’ve clearly been targeting him high). Does that change in Game 3, or do the Leafs continue to have all the answers for Florida’s netminder? There might be a time in this series when the rush opportunities dry up, or Bobrovsky heats up and stops more of them, and the Leafs will have to persevere with some dirty offense.
5. Florida’s biggest punch is coming. Game 1 was a pretty poor performance from Florida, a furious third-period comeback helping to salvage a game that was not as close as the scoreboard indicated in the end. Game 2 was better for Florida, but they were unable to come away with a win, and now they’re faced with a difficult situation. They need to win four of the next five games to win the series, and if they lose Game 3, they will be placing themselves in a situation that just ~2% of teams in NHL history have come back from. The Maple Leafs should head into Sunrise expecting the most ferocious performance they’ve seen from the Cats yet.
The Leafs have to carefully manage the opening 10 minutes, with a loud opposing building and a fired-up opponent, and show more of the steely composure that’s impressed many onlookers this postseason. The Panthers’ backs aren’t fully against the wall since it is not an elimination game, but teams have to play 2-0 deficit situations as if their season were on the line. Florida is a reigning champion for a reason. Brace for a hurricane if you’re the Leafs.
