Less than a year ago, the Florida Panthers and Toronto Maple Leafs met in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The Maple Leafs were counted out yet won Game 6 in Sunrise before the Panthers strolled into Toronto and won Game 7 in a rout.
Tonight, the two teams meet again.
It is Game No. 80 for both.
Much has changed.
Tonight, neither the Panthers nor the Maple Leafs want to win.
Sure, both teams have a lot of pride. They will both tell you they want to win.
And that will be true for the players on the ice and those coaches behind the bench.
But the truth is, neither the Panthers nor Maple Leafs really want to win tonight’s game in Toronto.
Not with so much on the line.
The two teams have long been eliminated from the postseason — for different reasons, and with much different views on their future.
The Panthers, once healthy, should be back in championship contention next season. The Leafs? Probably not.
Yet right now, the 2026 NHL Draft is on the mind of a lot of folks affiliated with both teams who will not be suiting up tonight.
The two teams have a lot to lose by winning tonight’s game.
Here is the deal: The Panthers and Maple Leafs are both tied with 78 points and near the bottom of the NHL standings.
Usually, that would ensure both teams have a pretty good draft pick come June.
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Only both have committed their first-round picks to someone else.
If certain conditions are met, however, they could keep their highly-coveted selections.
If the Maple Leafs do not end up with a top-five pick in the draft, their first-round selection goes to the Boston Bruins.
If the Panthers’ do not have a top-10 selection, their pick goes to the Chicago Blackhawks. If it is No. 10 or better, they get to keep it this summer and do what they will with it.
As long as the selection is 10 or higher, the Blackhawks will have to wait until next year to collect on the pick Florida sent over in the Seth Jones/Spencer Knight trade from last March.
So, in a season that has already been lost for both teams, more can be washed away just by, well, winning.
The Panthers and Maple Leafs both have three games remaining in this season, and, need losses to secure their unsaid goals.
If the season ended today, and the draft order stayed right where it was, the Panthers would hold the seventh overall pick. If two teams below them won the draft lottery and got the rights to the first and second selection, Florida would drop to No. 9 and keep their pick.
Chicago, which is currently in the No. 2 spot behind Vancouver, would have to wait until next year to get the Panthers first-round pick which has no restrictions on it like this one does.
Boston, which technically holds Florida’s top pick in 2027 for sending Brad Marchand to the tropics last year, would slide back and take the one in 2028.
The Panthers are in a good position to make some chicken salad out of this injury-plagued season. They would even have a chance to win the draft lottery and lay claim to a really big prize.
Toronto just needs to keep losing.
Toronto currently holds the sixth-overall pick and, if that standing holds up once the draft lottery is held on May 5, the Bruins get the pick.
The Maple Leafs are searching for a new general manager — Florida’s Sunny Mehta is coincidentally the odds-on favorite for the gig unless he heads home to New Jersey to take the Devils job instead — and will probably be looking for a coach as well.
Toronto really needs to have a top-5 pick in this year’s draft.
Beating the Panthers on Saturday night, packed house in Toronto on the Hockey Night in Canada stage notwithstanding, only muddles their lost season further.
Realistically, the Panthers can win Saturday night and still land in the top-10 — but why risk it?
Florida finishes its season in Sunrise, and odds are, it will win one of the final two games at home against Toronto’s equally goofed up Original 6 pals the Rangers on Monday, or puts the final nail in Detroit’s playoff hopes come Wednesday night.
The Panthers have gone winless in this four-game road trip (0-3-1) and honestly cannot afford to waste one of their final wins on the Maple Leafs.
General manager Bill Zito is cool with trading first-round picks (Mackie Samoskevich was Florida’s last first-round selection back in 2021) with Buffalo, Philadelphia, Montreal, and Calgary already using the Panthers’ previous picks with two futures pledged to the Blackhawks and Bruins.
This would be a gift.
Regardless of how the Panthers end up in the draft lottery — Vancouver has a 25 percent chance of getting the top pick based on another awful season — Zito can still use a top-10 pick.
Say Florida does not end up with a top-2 pick, but something more befitting their current standing.
So, No. 7.
The Panthers can scout the dickens out of the draft and take what could be a pretty good player, or parlay the pick into something more tangible like a current NHL player whose team is ready to make a move and, really, need that first-round pick more than Florida does.
Regardless of whether the Panthers use the pick or trade it for something else, keeping it is tantamount to holding a nice piece of currency six months ago they never thought they would have.
Coming into the season, it was just a foregone conclusion Chicago would have Florida’s top pick.
It would probably be somewhere in the 20s, but for the Blackhawks, that’s pretty good.
Being able to keep the pick, regardless of where it ends up as long as it is in the top-10, is a boon for the playoff-less Panthers.
Now, do the Panthers want to beat the Maple Leafs tonight?
For sure.
The Panthers, tonight anyway, cannot let pride get in the way.
Neither can the Maple Leafs.
This game could be a pillow fight of epic proportions.
The loser will be the winner.
No one will remember the final score in what is by all accounts a meaningless game.
But if the winning team loses out on a high draft pick, that will be remembered.
This is not exactly ‘Tank for Tua,’ but perhaps it works out better in the end.
ON DECK: GAME No. 80
FLORIDA PANTHERS at TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS