Can Leafs recover after blowing 2-0 series to Panthers? 

It was a weekend to forget for the Toronto Maple Leafs against the Florida Panthers.

After winning the first two games of the series at home, the Leafs fell to a Brad Marchand OT-winning goal in Game 3, before losing 2-0 in Game 4.

With ghosts of past playoff heartbreaks looming over the remainder of the second round, the Maple Leafs look to finish the series as quickly as possible and advance to the Eastern Conference Final for the first time since 2002.

On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli looked at whether the Maple Leafs can bounce back after surrendering the 2-0 series lead. 

Yaremchuk: Let’s start with the “Homer” series, Frank. The Leafs and Panthers, the home team winning every single one of the first four games.

Toronto [was] a bounce away from this thing being 3-0, but the OT winner from Brad Marchand gave the Panthers life, and then they pounced in Game 4 and dominated Toronto with the shutout victory. Things have really changed in the last 72 hours.

Seravalli: You think about this overtime, that Marchand OT winner, and you’re thinking, four minutes left in OT, what about the first 15 minutes of it? That’s the ultimate ‘what if,’ now for the Toronto Maple Leafs and their fans: ‘Well, what if we could have just gotten that one bounce? We’d be up 3-0 in the series, and it’d be a totally different dynamic. The Cats would be on the ropes.’

Now we’re looking at a situation where it feels like, even though it’s tied 2-2, the Florida Panthers are in the driver’s seat because they’ve woken up. They played some really compelling and dominating hockey in Game 4. 

All of a sudden you have those questions about the Toronto Maple Leafs thinking, ‘here we go again,’ even though they’re not trailing, and even though, if you told them, that this is the defending champs, you’ve got a best of three, and you have home ice advantage, it’s right where you’d want to be. No one said it would be easy, but the Toronto Maple Leafs also never take the easy road.

You can catch the rest of the Maple Leafs and Panthers segment and the rest of the show here…