For all the talk of these Toronto Maple Leafs being different, of the blue-and-white authoring a new chapter in franchise history, this feels awfully familiar.
Fresh off a Game 6 victory that put an end to the 2025 Battle of Ontario, the Maple Leafs have booked their ticket to the post-season’s second round for the second time in three seasons. And now — just like two years ago, after they’d finally scratched and clawed their way past the Tampa Bay Lightning — the reward waiting for them is a Florida Panthers squad that will be far tougher to take down.
But the task seems even taller now than it did back then, the last time these two met.
The Panthers group that heads to Scotiabank Arena this time isn’t a plucky underdog with designs on upending some brackets — they’re defending champs, battle-tested and unrelenting. All we learned about the Cats in Round 1 is the growing list of things that can’t slow them down — off-season roster shake-ups, injuries to key contributors, suspensions that toss further lineup chaos into the mix. Despite the tumult, they punched their ticket to Round 2 easily, dispensing with a Bolts team that looked elite all season.
But these Leafs seem unlike the nervy group Florida met back in 2023, too. A mid-round wobble had the Maple Leafs faithful wondering if their club had truly turned a new leaf, but taking the series in its entirety, it’s tough to deny Craig Berube’s team has a different DNA compared to the group Sheldon Keefe once led. They’ve traded highlight-reel hunting for shutdown defence, swapped run-and-gun for slow-and-steady.
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And more than anything else, they arrive in Round 2 not bathing in the relief of waving away their first-round ghosts, but simply calm, business-like, ready to move forward. How much that mentality matters against a Panthers side that’s proven expert in the art of winning playoff battles remains to be seen.
“It’s going to be another hard series,” Auston Matthews said in the wake of Thursday’s series-clinching win in Ottawa. “They’re obviously defending champs, back-to-back Cup Finals — it’s going to be hard.
“We’ve definitely got to reset, do our homework, rest up and go in there with some confidence. Go in there with some pushback.”
Head-to-head records:
Toronto: 1-3-0
Florida: 3-1-0
PLAYOFF TEAM STATS
ADVANCED STATS
Regular season 5-on-5 numbers via Natural Stat Trick
Maple Leafs X-Factor: Matthew Knies
It’s not going to be pretty against the Panthers. If you’re looking for an introduction to the playoff grind, to the fight, to the muck, look no further than Paul Maurice’s squad. The Maple Leafs have added far more of that to their game under Berube, a shift that served them well in Round 1. And the most promising glimpses on that front might’ve come from young Matthew Knies.
It wasn’t that the big-bodied winger was bowling people over on the regular — the 22-year-old finished with fewer hits in the opening round than Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews. It was just Knies’ relentless approach — the forechecking, the battling, the pushback. It was the sense that he was going to take it to the opponent standing across from him. Look back at the six-game bout, and Knies found himself at the centre of two of the series’ most memorable moments: a Game 4 goal against Linus Ullmark that was all speed, strength, and drive; and a more straightforward sequence a game later, when the 227-pound Leaf sent Shane Pinto flying.
Knies had just a goal and three assists through seven games in last year’s post-season. He posted two goals and a helper a year prior. This time around, fresh off a near-30-goal campaign, he’s potted three goals through five post-season games, and established himself as a key cog in the Maple Leafs machine. Against a Panthers side that will be physical, that will get under Toronto’s skin, that will be all over Matthews and Marner, the Maple Leafs will need Knies at his best.
Panthers X-Factor: Brad Marchand
If you were to ask the hockey gods how they could possibly make this Round 2 match-up any tougher to stomach for the Maple Leafs faithful — beyond simply pitting the blue-and-white against the defending champs, the team that crushed them the last time they made it past Round 1 — they’d probably say, ‘Throw Brad Marchand into the mix.’
There is no greater reminder of Toronto playoff ghosts than No. 63, the former Bruin who was on the sheet for the Maple Leafs’ Game 7 devastation in 2013, 2018, 2019, and just last year, in 2024. No member of this Panthers squad is as familiar with the weight of the Maple Leafs’ crest come playoff time, with the ways the opposition can ignite that pressure, feed off it, and sow some chaos.
It isn’t just that Marchand has never lost a playoff series against the Maple Leafs — and this specific core — though. It’s the damage he’s done over the course of his career whenever the blue-and-white are across from him. In 28 post-season games against Toronto, No. 63’s been a point-per-game scorer, collecting 10 goals and 29 points. In all, throughout his entire career, he’s amassed more points against the Maple Leafs than all but one other NHL club, putting up 58 points through 59 career games against Toronto. He isn’t the offensive weapon he once was, but there’s little question the veteran still has enough in the tank to come up with a moment or two in this series, to get the ghosts circling again.
Key Stat: Florida’s penalties vs. Toronto’s power play
In the regular season, no team amassed more penalty minutes (853) or penalties taken (340) than the Panthers. Meanwhile, the Maple Leafs’ power play looked elite down the stretch, ranking among the league’s best over the final months of the season. In the post-season, we’ve seen similar trends begin to take shape — the Cats amassed the third-most PIMs in Round 1 (72), while the Maple Leafs’ man-advantage has remained near the top of the pile, collecting six power-play goals on 17 opportunities.
There’s a chance this could swing things in Toronto’s favour. But it’s not as simple as it looks on paper, of course — the Panthers’ penalty kill has been elite too, and enters Round 2 fresh off nullifying a pretty dangerous, star-studded Bolts power play, a key reason the first-round match-up lasted only five tilts. And while Toronto’s power play looked dominant for a stretch to start Round 1, it also went cold in key moments later in the six-game bout — and the group’s struggles in the big moments, in the big games, are well-documented. Breaking through won’t be easy, but Toronto’s five-forward unit should get its chances against a Florida squad that’s no stranger to the box, and making good on those opportunities could prove crucial.
Of course, on the other end, the Panthers will get their chances too. The Maple Leafs racked up the fourth-most penalties themselves in Round 1. They didn’t get burned for it too often, but their Round 2 opponent has far more firepower to work with on the man-advantage. The Cats’ power-play numbers may have been middling during the regular season, but you need look no further than their Round 1 drubbing of the Lightning to see how Florida’s leaders can use the man-advantage to swing momentum — it was a pair of power-play markers from Matthew Tkachuk that turned a Game 1 nail-biter into a shellacking, and another from Carter Verhaeghe that pulled Florida back to level ground early in their series-clinching Game 5.
Both squads should get plenty of opportunities to make some special-teams noise — which side has the mettle to deliver when it matters most?
How the Maple Leafs win:
It wasn’t Toronto’s high-flying offence that got them by the Senators and through Round 1 — it was the steady defensive play of their rugged, rebuilt blue line, and some quality performances from netminder Anthony Stolarz, who’s looked like the best option the Maple Leafs have had in the cage in years. But that back-end group now faces a far more dangerous offence, one that mixes creative dynamism and netfront chaos with the best of them.
If Toronto is to outlast Florida and punch their ticket to the third round for the first time since 2002, it’ll be with a similar formula. It’ll be weathering the storm — Chris Tanev and Co. keeping the Panthers to the outside, limiting their opportunities; Stolarz looking even steadier than he did in Round 1, making the key saves at the key moments; and Toronto’s all-world scorers looking more like they did in Games 1-3 of the first round than Games 4-6, making good on the chances that come their way, and punishing the opposition on the power play.
How the Panthers win:
Toronto had trouble getting by the wild-card Sens — it took nail-biters for the Maple Leafs to outlast their provincial rivals in three of six games, and with a chance to close out Ottawa on home ice, Toronto laid an egg. Florida is fresh off dismantling a Lightning team that entered the post-season among the best in the league offensive and defensively, with a Vezina-nominated goaltender in the cage, the Art Ross winner up front, and one of the game’s most decorated defenders leading the blue line. They’ve won eight of their past nine playoff series — their only loss in that span coming in the 2023 Stanley Cup Final, which they avenged last year by taking down Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl when the stakes were as high as they can be in this sport.
All that to say, the Panthers have every bit of experience, know-how and talent to get by the Maple Leafs. Compared to the Sens, they’re a tougher outfit in all categories — better offensively, tougher defensively, backed by a better goaltender, more physical, and more seasoned. If they play to the identity they’ve honed over the past few years — getting under Toronto’s skin, knocking their high-flyers off their game, dragging them into the type of fight the Leafs’ leaders have never made it through — it’ll be a third-straight trip to the Conference Final for the Cats.
