Well, it happened again.
Following a brutal 6-1 showing at home in G5, the Leafs responded with a gutsy G6, just to put on another brutal showing at home in G7. Again, they lost 6-1.
I’m not going to jump into what comes next right now — and will likely need some time to digest everything — but for now, here is the final Game in 10 of the season that I won’t blame a single one of you for not reading:
1. Coming off a great road game, one big worry was how the Leafs would play in front of their fans back at home. It might sound trivial, but in Game 5s of both rounds, they were tense and didn’t play their game. In this Game 7, it was more of the same.
The first half of the period was completely dominated by the Panthers, even though the Leafs went back to their preferred matchups of the Auston Matthews line against the Aleksander Barkov unit. They committed countless turnovers, couldn’t get a puck in deep to even attempt to forecheck, and they didn’t win any battles. At one point, shots were 6-0 for the Panthers, and shot attempts were an astounding 21-0 for the Panthers.
The Leafs‘ only good player at the beginning of the game was Joseph Woll. Everyone else looked nervous or tense. Their only sniff at a chance was a broken neutral-zone sequence that led to a potential John Tavares – Pontus Holmberg 2v1, but Tavares misplayed it. Otherwise, the Panthers pinched on every play, forechecked hard, and the Leafs were not moving their feet.
At the first commercial break, Craig Berube was clearly pleading with the players to get their feet moving. Similar to his comments after the Game 5 debacle, they were not playing hockey. There were only two good things you could say, really: they hadn’t been scored on, and while they were dominated in the period, they didn’t give up much of anything in terms of grade-A opportunities.
2. When the team has been tilted non-stop, it needs its top players to step up and break the cycle. Chris Tanev upped the intensity and started winning defensive-zone battles, and then the Knies-Matthews-Marner line finally generated a shift the other way. Off a forced turnover at the top of the Panthers’ zone, Knies picked up the puck and made a good power move to his backhand but couldn’t finish. There was then a good shift by the Max Domi line, and shortly afterward, the Leafs finally recorded a shot on net when Nylander torched Seth Jones and drove it to the net, leading a flurry right in front of the crease.
By the time the period ended, the Leafs recorded seven high-danger attempts at five-on-five compared to the Panthers’ three. Both Scott Laughton and Steven Lorentz went on breakaways. There was also a good Bobby McMann chance in all alone in front. Shots started 7-0 for the Panthers before the Leafs recorded the next seven.
The period more than evened out, and the Leafs were creating shift after shift, but with a few minutes left, they took another too-many-men penalty. Florida actually used two defensemen on PP1 — Aaron Ekblad and Seth Jones — after the Leafs’ PK worked them in G6, but it didn’t amount to much. Florida’s best chance was a scrum in front, but Calle Jarnkrok won the battle to get the clear, and the period ended at 0-0.
3. The Leafs should have felt good going into the second. They survived a rough start, carried chances, and filed a good penalty kill early. But then they completely fell apart in the second period.
Before the halfway point of the period, the Panthers were up 3-0 and in complete control. The first goal came just over three minutes into the period on a 2v1 where Morgan Rielly made a terrible step-up in the neutral zone. There was no reason to do it; the Panthers had numbers through the neutral zone, and the player he stepped up on — Evan Rodrigues — was not a dangerous threat. Rielly had no chance of stopping the play, but he stepped up anyway, looking completely clueless about the situation around him.
Seth Jones took the pass, went on a 2v1, and sniped it home. The reason he was open in the first place: he outskated Matthew Knies down the ice. When the sequence started, Knies was a step ahead of Jones. Knies is clearly playing hurt and wasn’t himself, but if he decides to play hurt rather than stepping aside for a completely healthy player, he has to actually play. Knies was clearly unable to do anything on the ice.
4. Four minutes later, the Panthers doubled the lead. This goal, to me, is on Joseph Woll. On the initial entry, Brad Marchand skated in and shot it right at Woll’s chest. It had to be a whistle and a line change. It’s a clear, not particularly hard, center chest shot from a bad angle. Instead, it bounced off Woll’s chest to extend the play.
The Panthers picked up the rebound, worked it to the point, took a deflected point shot, and the rebound was banged home as Jake McCabe lost his man trying to front the shot, leaving Anton Lundell wide open to score into an empty net.
You could argue that this type of thing will happen when the ice is tilted against the team all period — and that’s fair — but this whole sequence should have been snuffed out by Woll swallowing up a nothing shot. It wasn’t, and the Panthers doubled their lead.
5. The Leafs were so unfathomably poor this period that the numbers didn’t fully do it justice. The shot attempts in the second period were 39-13. After a no-show to start the game, they worked through it, only to get completely dominated for the entire second period. The cherry on top was the Panthers’ fourth line scoring Florida’s third goal.
Tavares made a weird bounce pass to Nylander, who played a brutal final two games of this series and lost this battle to Seth Jones, who just stepped in front of him. Rielly fell on the far side, creating a Panthers 3v2.
If you’re keeping track: bad pass, lost battle, a Leaf falling, and a 3v2 where the Panthers shot it, picked up the rebound, and centered it in front for a one-timer goal. This was the Panthers’ fourth line against the Leafs’ second line.
6. The Panthers should have scored again, again off the stick of Seth Jones, but they benefited from a no-goal call on the ice. I don’t know why the Panthers didn’t challenge it. Up 3-0, I would have felt more than confident at that point, but I guess they didn’t want to give the Leafs a potential power-play attempt. Berube snapped after the third goal, and it accomplished absolutely nothing. All year, I said I was waiting for Berube to lose it, and now he decided to; I bet he regrets waiting so long.
Leafs 75 shot attempts allowed are the most by any team this season through 2 periods (Regular season + playoffs)
— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) May 19, 2025
7. The Leafs got the start they wanted in the third period, as just two minutes into the final frame, they caught Florida on a brutal line change, allowing Domi to walk in cleanly and beat Borovsky five-hole. Suddenly, the crowd was into the game, it was 3-1 with roughly 18 minutes left, and despite everything, the Leafs had life.
8. That 3-1 score didn’t even last a minute. Domi scored, tried to fire up the bench, the crowd got rolling, but for some reason, Berube didn’t respond by rolling his top line back out there. Instead, he sent a makeshift Knies-Holmberg-Pacioretty line out; they iced the puck, and then got scored on.
A major story in three of the Leafs’ four losses in this series is not winning any puck battles. Here, the puck was dumped in, they barely got to it, and it went up to the wall, where Pacioretty and Holmberg were in position, but they lost the battle. Marchand made a shot pass, and Loustarainen tipped it in tight on Woll, who you’d really like to see make a save here. Woll was not good enough in this game, just like the team in front of him.
9. For good measure, the Panthers outscored the Leafs in the third period, too, as Barkov rinsed Tavares on a faceoff and Sam Reinhart stepped into one.
Of course, Brad Marchand added an empty-netter salt to the wound, because why not?
10. Thank you for following all season, MLHS readers.
Game Flow: 5v5 Shot Attempts
