Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Florida Panthers: 2023 Stanley Cup playoff series preview and pick

Credit: Matthew Tkachuk and Ilya Samsonov (© Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports)

Toronto Maple Leafs: 2^nd in Atlantic Division, 111 points

Florida Panthers: 2^nd Eastern Conference Wild Card, 92 points

Schedule (ET)

Date	Game	Time
Tuesday, May 2	1. Florida at Toronto	7 p.m. ET
Thursday, May 4	2. Florida at Toronto	7 p.m. ET

Additional dates and start times will be confirmed later this week.

The Skinny

The Toronto Maple Leafs are freed from the jail cell that was their 19-year playoff series winless streak. The six consecutive first-round exits are now a thing of the past after they slayed the dragon, knocking off the Tampa Bay Lightning in six games on captain John Tavares’ overtime goal Saturday night. So what on Earth happens next? The Leafs have to be the most difficult team to forecast in Round 2. Will they be an unstoppable force, playing with newfound confidence? Or will their flawed performance in Round 1, in which they were squarely outplayed by the Lightning in four of the games, make them an easy out?

Meanwhile, the Panthers are riding the high of what some are calling the greatest first-round upset in NHL history, overcoming a record 43-point margin in the standings against the Boston Bruins, who had set NHL single-season records with 65 wins and 135 points and led the first-round series 3-1. The Panthers miraculously stormed back and shocked the Bruins in their own building with a come-from-behind, Game 7 overtime victory. The Panthers were masquerading as a 92-point team, however, having started their season slowly as they battled injuries to many of their top players. They’re a year removed from winning their own Presidents’ Trophy. They don’t represent an “easier” opponent for the Leafs by any means.

Head to Head

Toronto: 3-0-1

Florida: 1-3-0

The Leafs mostly had their way with the Panthers across their four regular-season matchups. The first one, taken 5-4 in overtime by Toronto, was a penalty-filled circus, after which Paul Maurice earned himself a $25,000 fine for criticizing the officiating. The Leafs pummelled the Cats 6-2 in their own building on March 23 before the Panthers answered with an overtime road win less than a week later. The Panthers badly outplayed the Leafs in their fourth matchup April 10, almost doubling them up in shots, but Ilya Samsonov turned aside 45 of 46 shots to steal a win. The Leafs rested him for the balance of the regular season after that.

Top Five Scorers

Toronto

Mitch Marner, 11 points
Auston Matthews, 9 points
Morgan Rielly, 8 points
John Tavares, 7 points
William Nylander, 7 points

Florida

Matthew Tkachuk, 11 points
Brandon Montour, 8 points
Carter Verhaeghe, 8 points
Aleksander Barkov, 6 points
Sam Reinhart, 5 points

X-Factor

There simply hasn’t been a player quite like Matthew Tkachuk in a long time. He has the offensive chops to post consecutive 100-point seasons on two different teams. He’s elite defensively. And he combines the personality of an agitator with a 6-foot-2, 201 frame that allows him to throw his weight around. No player in the NHL – not even Connor McDavid – tilted the 5-on-5 play driving like Tkachuk did this season. The Panthers outscored their opponents 89-60 with him on the ice. They outchanced their opponents 830-513. Teams just had no answer for Tkachuk and his most common linemates Carter Verhaeghe and Sam Bennett, and that included the Boston Bruins in the first round. The Panthers outscored the Bruins 7-2 with Tkachuk out there at 5-on-5.

The Leafs took down an extremely talented Lightning team in Round 1, but you could make a case Tkachuk is the second most dominant player on the planet right now. Do they – or does anyone – have answer for his particular set of skills? Or will he run through Toronto the way he did Boston?

Offense

The Leafs have been one of the better offensive clubs in the NHL for pretty much the entire Auston Matthews/Mitch Marner era, and that mostly carried over into Round 1 of the playoffs. Their 3.83 goals per game were the third most in the 16-team field, which is impressive given they were up against all-world goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. The Leafs’ top-end skill came through, with their core five skaters – Marner, Matthews, Morgan Rielly, Tavares and William Nylander – carrying their offense, contributing 16 of their 23 goals. Matthews picked up his play as the series progressed, burying all five of his goals across the final four games.

The Leafs’ power play, which was No. 2 in the NHL in the regular season, did look out of sync over the last couple games of the series, but they have an easier matchup on paper against a Panthers team that had the second-worst regular season penalty kill of any team in the 2023 playoff field and struggled at a 59.3 percent clip versus Boston in Round 1.

The Panthers, territorially, were more or less as dominant this season as they were last season, when they became the first team in 26 years to eclipse four goals per game. They ranked top-four in the NHL in expected goals this season. They finished “only” with the NHL’s No. 6 offense largely thanks to a slow start. From Jan. 1 onward, only the Edmonton Oilers averaged more goals per game than the Panthers. They are sneaky-deep; they have the ability to roll Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart on three different lines, for instance. And they get active contributions from their D-corps, especially Brandon Montour, who broke out for a 73-point season and carried his momentum into a strong Round 1 against the Bruins.

The Leafs may have a slight edge in top-end star power, but the Panthers are dangerous nine deep at forward. It’s an even matchup here.

Defense

As I outlined in the preview for Toronto’s first-round matchup, the team’s defensive makeup changed a lot after GM Kyle Dubas’ Trade Deadline tinkering. The Leafs went from solidly above average at preventing opposing chances to very suspect, and that trend continued against the Lightning. For more periods than not in the series, the Leafs held on for dear life and weathered storms of rubber. The Bolts outchanced them 198-137 at 5-on-5 in the series. The pair of Mark Giordano and Justin Holl got caved in, particularly Holl, with the Bolts holding a staggering 14-2 scoring edge with him on the ice in Games 1-5. No team in the first round allowed more scoring chances per 60 minutes than the Leafs. This is the tradeoff Dubas made: he has a tougher team with better intangibles – see, Luke Schenn’s poise under pressure and Ryan O’Reilly’s clutch moments against the Bolts – but this team also got slower and defensively leakier in the process.

Coach Sheldon Keefe did make significant adjustments for Game 6, removing Holl from the lineup and rolling with seven defensemen: Rielly, Luke Schenn, Jake McCabe, T.J. Brodie, Giordano, Timothy Liljegren and Erik Gustafsson. It worked in spurts, but the Leafs were still mostly outplayed. On one hand, the big, tough, Panthers team is built quite similarly to the Lightning team Toronto took down. On the other hand, the Leafs’ “lay and pray” defensive strategy does not feel sustainable.

The Panthers were a so-so defensive club in the regular season despite the fact they have many players with strong two-way track records, from former Selke Trophy winner Barkov to Anton Lundell to big blueliner Aaron Ekblad. Their usual top pair of Ekblad and Gustav Forsling had a subpar season in their own end. The Panthers got most of their wins in 2022-23 by outscoring their opponent and weren’t perfect on defense in Round 1 against the Bruins either, surrendering at least three goals in all seven games. The Leafs/Panthers matchup has potential to deliver some track meets.

Goaltending

Samsonov, on paper, entered the first round as the Leafs’ sturdiest starting playoff goalie in a couple decades, which said a lot about how badly the team was hurting for someone they could count on in net. He was a top-10 goalie during the 2022-23 regular season but commenced his first postseason as a Leaf with one career playoff victory. He rose to the challenge against the Lightning, outplaying future Hall of Famer Vasilevskiy for most of the series. Samsonov wasn’t unbeatable by any means; he was shakier in front of the home crowd in particular. But he came through with the big saves when the Leafs really needed them. He came up huge during the Leafs’ comeback wins in Games 3 and 4, and he stopped all 10 shots he faced across their three overtime wins. He passed the test; if he can hold his own opposite Vasilevskiy, he can do so against anyone.

And who will be opposite Samsonov? Alex Lyon got the nod to open the playoffs for the Panthers after he willed them into the postseason by going 4-1-1 with a .946 save percentage in April. He looked more like a 30-year-old journeyman than a world beater in posting a .902 SV% across the first three games of the Bruins series, however, and they turned back to $10 million man Sergei Bobrovsky. Entering the postseason, ‘Bob’ had the lowest career playoff save percentage of all active goalies with 50-plus games to their name. But he was the goalie of record when the Columbus Blue Jackets upset the record-breaking Tampa Bay Lightning juggernaut in 2018-19, and he found similar magic against the Bruins this spring. His overall numbers were pedestrian, but he came up massively in a tide-turning overtime win in Game 5, stopping 44 of 47 shots. Riding a three-game winning streak, he likely gets the first look as Florida’s starter. The Leafs’ net situation arguably looks stabler right now, however.

Injuries

Matt Murray, firmly relegated to backup goaltending duty, didn’t surface during the first round. He returned to practice Monday for the first time since his April head injury but is considered the No. 3 option for now, not ready to return. Joseph Woll provides arguably a better alternative as Toronto’s No. 2 right now anyway.

The Leafs didn’t officially sustain any new injuries in the first round, but coach Sheldon Keefe vaguely referenced injuries when he juggled his lineup for Game 6 against Tampa, removing Holl, Zach Aston-Reese and Sam Lafferty. The Leafs haven’t provided any updates to suggest they have legitimate new infirmary concerns.

Scrappy Panthers forward Ryan Lomberg is out week to week with an undisclosed injury that is believed to be to his hand and doesn’t look particularly likely to make it back during this series.

Intangibles

Which team has an intangible edge? The one that just lifted a massive weight off its shoulders, or the weightless team that just pulled an all-time great upset? Perhaps the answer is neither.

If we’re looking for an intangible storyline to watch carefully in this series, it’s the concept of home ice. Beware the Snowbirds. The Leafs already get four of a possible seven games at home, and it’s possible they fill FLA Live Arena with a large contingent of Blue and White sweaters. If there was any doubt that it’s a legitimate concern for the Panthers: they already released a statement Monday indicating they were restricting ticket access to U.S. citizens. Not that it will work particularly well; it won’t stop the tickets from being resold. So it’s a safe bet that Florida’s home ice advantage won’t be as powerful as Toronto’s in this series.

Then again, the Leafs were 3-0 on the road and 1-2 at home in Round 1, while the Panthers went 3-1 in Boston. According to Round 1, it was a home ice disadvantage.

Series prediction

Both these teams can score. Both have a superstar. Both are riding some serious emotional momentum. Both have sometimes-iffy defensive acumen. So I’m expecting a high-scoring, wild, close series that goes the distance.

As for which team gets the edge? I lean toward the team with slightly better top-end star power, sturdier goaltending and a power play equipped to burn an opponent that has a struggling penalty kill. The matchup slightly favors the Leafs on paper, but it should be a war.

Leafs in seven games.

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