2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Maple Leafs vs. Panthers series preview

May 2, 2025, 11:52 EDT

2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Maple Leafs vs. Panthers series preview

Credit: Apr 2, 2025; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews (34) passes against Florida Panthers defenseman Gustav Forsling (42) during the first period at Scotiabank Arena. Mandatory Credit: John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images

Toronto Maple Leafs: 1^st in Atlantic Division, 108 points, def. OTT in Round 1 (4-2)
Florida Panthers: 3^rd in Atlantic Division, 98 points, def. TB in Round 1 (4-1)

Schedule (ET)

TBD

The Skinny

It was nothing less than dramatic as always, but the Leafs pushed past the Ottawa Senators in Round 1 after a two-game blip in which Ottawa narrowed a 3-0 series deficit to 3-2. Anthony Stolarz was a rock in goal, particularly early in the series when the Leafs took Games 2 and 3 in overtime. Toronto’s star forwards answered the call more often than not, with Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, John Tavares and Matthews Knies combining to score 12 of the team’s 19 goals in the series. Chris Tanev led a gutsy D-corps that did an excellent job clogging shooting lanes, forcing Ottawa into a strategy of lobbing pucks from the point and hoping for deflections and bounces.

But the Leafs did get outchanced in all six games and had the benefit of bending and not breaking against an inexperienced Ottawa team whose best young players, from Brady Tkachuk to Jake Sanderson, were playing in their first postseason games. Now, the Leafs draw a much more difficult matchup: the defending Stanley Cup champs in the Panthers, who cut through them like wet paper in Round 2 when they faced off two years ago.

In previewing their first-round matchup versus the Tampa Bay Lightning, I asked whether the Panthers, who stumbled late in the regular season, were playing possum. They’d been resting many of their stars, after all, and were preparing to unthaw Matthew Tkachuk from LTIR after holding him out since the 4 Nations Face-Off while he nursed a groin injury. The answer: yes, possum indeed. The champs demolished a Tampa team that impressed all season long and looked like a true Stanley Cup contender. The Panthers outscored the Bolts 19-12, earning all four wins by multi-goal margins. It’s safe to say we can throw the 98-point version of the Panthers out the window. The new appraisal after Round 1: top Stanley Cup contender in the NHL and a clear favorite to open this series.

Head to Head

Toronto: 1-3-0
Florida: 3-1-0

The Leafs struggled to solve the Panthers this season. The Panthers dominated 5-on-5 play across the four matchups. Florida’s power play torched Toronto in the first two meetings, a 5-1 beatdown in November and a 3-2 Florida win in March. The Leafs’ star forwards came up big in an important early-April win, but the Panthers had no Tkachuk or Aleksander Barkov for that matchup. In the teams’ final meeting, the Panthers held a 25-9 edge in 5-on-5 scoring chances. The Leafs can’t look to the regular-season series as a confidence booster.

Top Five Scorers

Toronto

William Nylander, 9 pts
Mitch Marner, 8 pts
Auston Matthews, 7 pts
John Tavares, 5 pts
Matthew Knies, 3 pts

Florida

Sam Reinhart, 6 pts
Matthew Tkachuk, 5 pts
Sam Bennett, 5 pts
Anton Lundell, 5 pts
Aleksander Barkov, 5 pts

X-Factor

Samuel. Hunter. Bennett. The mean, bruising power forward owns the Leafs. He lit them up for three goals and five points in the three games he played against them this season. More importantly: he bullied them in Round 2 of the 2022-23 playoffs, throwing 24 hits in five games. He was a chore to move in front of Toronto’s net. He also bludgeoned Knies, then a rookie, with a brutal hit in Game 2, concussing him and knocking him out of the series. Bennett’s tone-setting ability can turn the tide of a game or series at any moment.

But are the Leafs better equipped to respond to him than they were two years ago? He had his way with Toronto’s team as Kyle Dubas had constructed it. The 2024-25 edition of the Leafs, as built by GM Brad Treliving and coached by stoic Craig Berube, are the biggest, heaviest team in the NHL. They’re much more of an initiator in physical play than they used to be, particularly on defense, with the likes of Tanev, Jake McCabe, Brandon Carlo, Simon Benoit and Oliver Ekman-Larsson consistently making life difficult for forecheckers. How the Leafs handle Bennett, right from Game 1, should tell us a lot about what to expect in this series.

Offense

Like every incarnation of the Leafs in the Matthews/Marner era, this one scored with the best of ’em in the regular season, finishing seventh in goals and ninth on the power play, with six different players eclipsing 20 goals. The consistent problem for Toronto has been translating its high-octane attack to the postseason, when scoring means getting ugly goals and fighting through checks and attacks that might be called as penalties in the regular season but are let go in the playoffs. The Leafs found their offense for much of the Ottawa series, most emphatically in Game 1 when they erupted for six goals, and they scored three or more goals in five of six games. They don’t generate 5-on-5 scoring chances like they did in the Dubas era, – no team averaged fewer actual chances at 5-on-5 during Round 1 – but their finishing skill lets them rely on quality over quantity. After a demoralizing, jittery 1 for 21 showing on the power play in Round 1 against the Boston Bruins last year, the Leaf power play cooked this time, going 6 for 17 against the Sens. That said, the Leafs weren’t perfect. Their scoring went cold in Games 4 and 5, going more than 90 minutes without a goal at one point. They also got just two goals in six games from bottom-six forwards, albeit both, coming from Max Domi and Max Pacioretty, were game winners.

The Panthers weren’t overly impressive offensively in the regular season, with just one 30-goal scorer, but as I said in previewing their Round 1 matchup, they were better than the surface numbers showed. They were the second-best team in the NHL at expected goal generation at 5-on-5, and it stood to reason their offense would look much more potent in the playoffs once they iced a full-strength lineup. That’s precisely what happened. They averaged 3.80 goals per game against the Lightning, with a power play clicking at 25 percent. After ranking 28th in the league in regular-season shooting percentage at all strengths at 9.51, they converted on 14.84 percent of their opportunities in Round 1. The wily champs care not for regular-season accomplishments, focused on getting their best possible lineup ready to rock for the playoffs, and they immediately looked like a transformed team. The top six of Carter Verhaeghe, Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Evan Rodrigues, Bennett and Tkachuk is deadly enough, but the third line of Eetu Luostarinen, Anton Lundell and Brad Marchand pancaked its competition in Round 1. With all three on the ice, the score was 4-0 Florida, and they generated 53.85 percent of the expected goals. The Panthers forward group hasn’t been this deep all year.

Defense

The Leafs are a somewhat confounding team in their own zone. They actually allowed the most 5-on-5 scoring chances of any Eastern Conference playoff qualifier in the regular season, and the “weather the storm” identity was still apparent against an Ottawa team that held the bigger piece of the chance-generation pie. But here’s the thing: the Leafs actually allowed the fewest 5-on-5 shots on goal per game of any team in Round 1. Their opponent may attempt a lot of shots, but they don’t get through when you have the likes of Tanev on the blueline – not to mention some of the best shot-blocking forwards in the NHL, few better than Matthews. Stolarz was repeatedly complimentary about his D-corps’ ability to get in the way of shots against Ottawa. Only one team blocked more than Toronto in Round 1. The Leafs will have to rely on that skill against the Panthers, who are much better equipped than the Senators to punish any breakdowns.

The Panthers are a model defensive club. They ranked among the top teams in the NHL at scoring chance prevention in the regular season and there’s a case to be made they have the two best defensive forwards in the game in Barkov and Reinhart. Even against the top offensive team in the NHL in the Lightning, the Panthers did a strong job keeping the scoring chances and high-danger chances at a manageable level. They held Nikita Kucherov, reigning Art Ross Trophy winner two years running, without a goal for a second consecutive series – stretching 10 games dating back to last postseason.

As the league’s most penalized team in the regular season, discipline was a potential weakness heading into the Battle of Florida. The Panthers did get themselves into some trouble. They actually took more penalties per 60 in Round 1 than they did as the league’s most penalized regular-season team, and Aaron Ekblad earned a two-game suspension for his forearm shiv of Brandon Hagel, but the Panthers killed off an impressive 88.9 percent of their penalties in the series. If you play a rugged style, you need a strong PK to enable it, and the Panthers got that in Round 1. They’ll need it again in Round 2 against a five-forward Toronto PP1 unit that has looked deadly for several months running now.

The Panthers’ D-corps isn’t as deep this season and will start a second consecutive series minus Ekblad, but Gustav Forsling is still around to handle the toughest matchups with any partner. The Panthers managed to break even at 5-on-5, more or less, with Forsling out there against the Kucherov line, and Forsling was also the star of Florida’s PK in the series. He remains one of the most underrated top-end blueliners in the game. If he can handle Tampa’s best, he can comfortably take on Toronto’s elite forwards, too.

Goaltending

On a per-game basis, Stolarz was the best goaltender in the NHL this season in terms of goals saved above expected per 60. He and the also-stellar Joseph Woll appeared to give Toronto its steadiest crease entering the playoffs in two decades, and that rung true in Round 1. Mostly. As the .901 save percentage tells you, Stolarz wasn’t perfect, with his rebound control looking shaky for much of the Ottawa series, but he was solid and made almost all the saves he had to make, including many on point-blank chances to preserve leads or ties. Poised and athletic for a 6-foot-6 giant, he stopped almost everything he could see. He had a bit more trouble finding pucks when Ottawa created traffic in front of him, and the Panthers will surely attempt to do the same.

Sergei Bobrovsky isn’t quite the game stealer he was during his 2012-13 and 2016-17 Vezina Trophy seasons or even when he lifted an 8-seed Panther team to the Final two years ago. But he’s matured into a reliable, relatively consistent veteran stud and Cup winner who makes enough of the important saves. He wasn’t dominant in Round 1, but he was better than Andrei Vasilevskiy, and that’s what mattered. Among 20 goalies who played two or more games in Round 1, Bobrovsky graded out eighth in goals saved above expected per 60, one spot above Stolarz. Not elite, in other words, but more than good enough to support the deep and well-rounded team playing in front of ‘Bob.’ He’s not going to lose you a series, and he’s still good enough to keep his team alive in an overtime period or change the momentum of a game with a flurry of saves.

Injuries

Depth blueliner Jani Hakanpaa hasn’t suited up since November, but the Leafs sustained no new injuries in Round 1, though Matthews continues to play through an unknown ailment that limits his long-range shot power and accuracy.

Sorry to the haters out there, but the Panthers are the healthiest they’ve been all season. Their only regular absent to open the series is Ekblad, who is fit as a fiddle but has one game remaining in his sentence after he knocked Hagel out of the Tampa series.

Intangibles

The Leafs have never beaten former longtime Bruin Marchand in a playoff series. They’re 0 for 4. In those matchups, a 27-game sample size, he has 10 goals, 29 points and four game-winning goals. Toronto never lacks for mental hurdles to overcome, but having Marchand present, wearing another team’s jersey, is just one more problem to worry about.

That said: the Leafs have an opportunity for a mental edge in this series. Two years ago, the infamous “We want Florida!” chants gave a plucky Panthers team bulletin-board fodder, and the Leafs quickly squandered their favorite status. While Toronto finished 10 points north of Florida this season and once again has home ice to open the series, no one considers the Leafs a favorite against the reigning Cup winner. Could that take some pressure off the Leafs and help them play looser?

Series Prediction

These aren’t the same two clubs who met two years ago. The Panthers are the experienced juggernaut rather than the upstart underdog. The Leafs still have demons to conquer to prove they can finally make a deep playoff run, but they’re a tough, well-rounded group under Berube’s tutelage. Theoretically, they’re readier for the Panthers than they were in 2023. That said: the Panthers made it look frighteningly easy against a very good Tampa team. The Leafs had a tough enough time against the Sens, with three games going to overtime, and the Panthers’ superior finishing ability makes them so much more dangerous. The Leafs had just enough trouble with Ottawa that beating Florida feels like too big a mountain to summit.

Panthers in six games.

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