The 2025 NHL Playoffs: Second Round: An Off-Balance Round-Up.
Consistency, camaraderie and heartbreak.
Eastern Conference, Semifinals
Florida Panthers vs Toronto Maple Leafs
Florida wins 4-3
It ‘twas indeed, a tale of two cities.
Champions verus harlequins.
Because yes, even after falling behind 2-0 in their best-of-seven against Toronto, even after missing their opportunity to put the Leafs away on home ice in Game 6, even after finding themselves in a do-or-die Game 7 on Sunday night, the Florida Panthers never seemed to waver.
Sergei Bobrovsky, after that shaky start to the series, recovered in net, Paul Maurice was a steadying force behind the bench and the Panthers, with goal-scoring contributions from nearly every member of their roster, composed and collected, added further credence to the mantra (ever-cliché as it might seem) that depth, defence and offensive spark will win championships.
Playing with intensity. Working the corners. Winning loose puck battles and imposing their structural will.
So with their dismantling over Toronto, a 6-1 win in that decisive Game 7, the Panthers took another step forward in their title defense: they’ll play Carolina starting on Tuesday, as they return to the Eastern Conference Finals for the third straight season.
And the Maple Leafs?
Oh buddy.
It is a reminder, once more, that two things can be true at once.
On one hand, yes, the collection of raw talent this team has assembled over the past ten years is, easily, the most skilled in the franchise’s century-plus of existence.
After spending literal decades wandering through hockey purgatory - the Ballard years, The Muskoka Five, the ineffectual more-of-the-same that defined The Phil Kessel Experience -, the Leafs, finally, reversed course in the mid-2010s: becoming a perennial regular season powerhouse, boosted a who’s-who of young stars counted among the best in the sport and established themselves as a fixture in the postseason.
And yet.
And yet, their defining trait, again-and-again, is that, for all their talent, for all their ability, for all their talk of grit and determination and playing the game “the right way” and not being so strictly defined by their past failures, they still couldn’t get it done:
They are now just 2-11 in playoff series across the Matthews-Marner-Nylander Era.
They’ve made it, in that time, to the second round only twice.
And, to top it all off, they have shown a complete inability to close out in the clutch, 0-6 in Game 7s specifically dating back to 2018, per Sportsnet.
There are degrees of separation, of course.
Fans, however displeased and disheartened though they are, shouldn’t be throwing jerseys on the ice and when Maurice and noted Leaf Killer Brad Marchand both, instead of celebrating their series win, spent their post-game pressers openly defending the Maple Leafs from the vitriol they are sure to receive from their fanbase and the media this summer?
It doesn’t reflect well whatsoever on the culture that has developed in Toronto.
And sure, maybe if Anthony Stolarz didn’t take that shot off the mask and then a Sam Bennett elbow to the head in Game 1, the Leafs may have had a stronger foundation behind them.
But Joesph Woll, thrust into the spotlight as he was, though one could definitely argue with his reads and adjustments (or lack thereof), did nothing but battle
His shutout in Game 6, followed by a team-wide collapse in Game 7 that saw Florida put up three goals over a six minute stretch in the second period, received no response, no real pushback, no resilience by the Leafs to, if nothing else, go down swinging with their season on the line.
There was, one might recall, the feeling that the team was, at last, better positioned to change their narrative as springtime underachievers this time around, too.
Under new coach Craig Berube, they won the division, securing top spot in the Atlantic with a banner, 108-point year and seemed far more committed, beyond simple lip-service, to a more complete, 200-foot game.
They came out of the Ottawa series with a confidence that saw them spirit to those two straight wins in the first place and appeared to be firing on as many cylinders as any team can, deep into May.
But as he sat in the media room on Sunday, one would be remiss for thinking Berube sounded a whole lot like his ever-beleaguered predecessor behind the Leafs bench, Sheldon Keefe: utterly, truly bewildered.
I thought we put ourselves in a good spot in both games coming home. We just had disappointing games, for sure. We go down there, win a Game 6 and play extremely well. It is frustrating. I don’t have an answer for that question.
[Florida] were the more desperate team tonight. They were the more aggressive team tonight. That is what I take out of the game. You win a Game 6 and that is great. You come home and you have to have a level of desperation and determination.
I didn’t feel we had it.
- Toronto Maple Leafs coach, Craig Berube, following his team’s Game 7 loss.
Seems about right.
But here’s the thing.
The fans will be back (they always are), the wolves circling the wagons will eventually peel away and come mid-July, once the blitz of free agency has come and gone, Leafs Nation will do what they do best: look forward to the fall with optimism, as their team continues to chase down their first championship in nearly six decades.
There is just no more believing it will be with this group at the helm, however.
There can’t be.
Not too long ago, he was the poster child for the team’s lack of character but William Nylander’s emergence over the past several seasons, from under-the-radar leader to legitimate playoff performer seems to have finally quieted most of the noise (his inconsistent defensive effort aside) and as far as anyone should be safe, he is probably the one: that is, next to Matthew Knies, who, at just 22 and injured though he clearly was over the final two games, has more than earned the extension he is due this summer.
Though for close on a decade, the Leafs, led by team president Brendan Shanahan and his once vaunted “Shanaplan” have stood staunchly, unwavering even, behind the team’s so-dubbed Core Four of players.
Understood, it has been, that any movement, as former-GM Kyle Dubas now infamously described, would be a non-starter.
Remember, “we can and we will”?
Sheesh.
Yet no matter how much they might still believe it, the Leafs may have finally seen their hand forced.
Shanahan doesn’t have a contract beyond this season and there simply exists no sane universe where he is brought back. All architects must eventually stand behind their creations but Shanahan, for all his platitudes and hopes and dreams, has done little more than direct an impressive looking house of cards into the wind, year-after-year.
Gone too, it seems, is Mitch Marner, a UFA come Canada Day.
On one hand, it is improbable.
Marner, the hometown kid, the offensive wizard, the Selke-nominated dynamo who brought the Leafs into that new era with such abandon, such energy, such PR department-approved, capital-P Passion, to move on from him, five, six years ago, it would’ve been dismissed as little more than the complaints of a disgruntled minority.
But as he screamed at his teammates, just as their season was slipping away into nothingness, it felt darkly prophetic.
Too little, too late.
His own fans, booing him relentlessly in the closing moments, a bookend, possibly, on a tenure that saw him (per Sportsnet), succeed, as-a-playmaker-first be dammed, in putting just three shots on net in the final five games of his season.
Playoff-after-playoff, unable to translate his October-to-April numbers into anything of value when the heat was highest.
And while captain Auston Matthews decried “passengers” in his post-game words, four points and just a single goal across seven games against Florida is just not enough for a player who, injured on more than one front as he presumably was, commands over thirteen-million a season and the adulation of the market but has yet to lead them any real closer to their long-sought goal.
John Tavares, Morgan Rielly, nobody should reasonably expect any degree of safety around these players or their supporting cast in the coming weeks.
Less tinkering around the edges to receive the same result, more change.
Everything, to be carefully considered, of course.
Despite the calls for the guillotine, to stare down any major retool for players in their prime, for a team still ostensibly in the contention mix, it shouldn’t be undertaken with an urge to simply quiet the noise.
But they must do something.
They must.
Because this just isn’t working anymore.
Western Conference, Semifinals
Winnipeg Jets vs Dallas Stars
Dallas wins 4-2
The Dallas Stars can only hope the third time’s the charm.
And after Thomas Harley’s OT winner on Saturday, a quarter-slapper from the hashmarks that slipped past Connor Hellebuyck and secured Dallas the series win over Winnipeg, it sent the Stars to what will be their third straight Western Conference Finals.
But the game carried a particular emotion that went beyond the on-ice result, with the news, just hours before puck-drop, that long-time Jets stalwart Mark Scheifele had lost his father earlier in the day.
And while there was uncertainty, understandably, surrounding his status, Scheifele played and though his Jets ultimately came up short, he scored his team’s only goal in their 2-1 loss.
A tribute, if there ever was one.
Some things, after all, are simply bigger than hockey.
But Dallas, in their second-consecutive West Final series against an equally-determined Edmonton team, will continue their fight for the Cup on Wednesday.
And the playoffs march on.