Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Chris Tanev (8) and right wing Mitch Marner (16) defend Florida Panthers centre Brad Marchand (63) during the second period in game four of the second round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Amerant Bank Arena.Kim Klement Neitzel/Reuters
After he’d won Game 3, Brad Marchand tossed a compliment at the Leafs so far backhanded that it was forehanded.
“They have that killer instinct now,” he said.
By way of retort, Toronto did CPR on Florida’s post-season for most of Sunday night. In the end, they lost 2-0.
There’s only 200 feet of ice, but over the course of three hours, the Leafs ran a marathon in reverse. Whenever things started to look up, someone took a penalty. For most of the game, Florida outshot them at a ratio of 3:1. The only thing that wasn’t lopsided was the score.
These may be new-look Leafs under coach Craig Berube, but they are apparently still under the sway of Marchand’s post-season black magic. All he has to do is speak aloud and Toronto starts coming apart.
The series returns to Canada knotted at two wins apiece. What had looked like something in the same postal code as a sure thing has become a toss-up. The only differences now are momentum (advantage: Florida) and home ice (advantage: Toronto).
On the bright side, the Leafs will be better on Wednesday. Mostly because it’s not possible to be worse.
For much of the series, the Leafs have had the benefit of somnambulant starts by the Panthers. On Sunday, Florida finally showed up to work on time. No sloppy penalties or easy odd-man breaks. Four games in, it felt like the coaches on either side had got a handle on what the other guys were doing, and how to impede it.
The tone was set early by Marchand, further squirrelling his way into the Leafs’ psyche. When Toronto’s Chris Tanev dawdled with the puck in his skates in front of his own goal, Marchand wiped him out from behind.
This Panthers’ crowd doesn’t do nuance. This is the sort of arena where they send out a pretend Zamboni with passengers in it alongside the real Zamboni between periods. They call it the Fanboni, a name which wouldn’t have gotten past Standards and Practices anywhere that isn’t Florida.
This crowd likes two things – goals and violence. Marchand is exactly their sort of player.
Meanwhile, the Leafs were entering the dumb penalty phase of their post-season. Max Domi got an early one for letting his stick float up and tap Matthew Tkachuk in the face. Bobby McMann got one for plastering a man into the sideboards from behind.
One of the things that has changed about the Leafs during this run is the shortage of bad ideas. They don’t always do the right thing, but they also don’t do the wrong thing. That streak ended on Sunday.
When Matthew Knies got the third Leafs penalty in a row – a soft one for hooking – the Florida crowd jeered him on his way into the box. It must have been a nice ego boost for the 22-year-old. They only jeer you if they know who you are.
New No. 1 goalie Joseph Woll bailed his team out for three penalties, but the fourth – a puck put over the boards for a delay of game on Oliver Ekman-Larsson – was pushing it too far. After Carter Verhaeghe’s goal, Florida came out of the first period with a lead for the first time in the series. They’d outshot the Leafs 15-4 in the frame. Toronto had played more than a third of the period down a man.
In the second, the Leafs attempted a more direct approach. The time of slipping through people was over, and the time of running through them had begun. Knies tried to bootstrap some momentum by offering to fight Gustav Forsling. Forsling declined. Why mess with what to that point was a winning game plan?
Florida continued to have the better of the chances, but thanks to Woll, the advantage remained at one. However things turn out for the Leafs in these playoffs, they can’t lean on that old saw about goaltending. Woll and injured starter Anthony Stolarz have both played mistake-free hockey.
The rest of the Leafs were still unloading shots into their own feet. In the midst of an unpromising Toronto power play, Mitch Marner took a silly tripping penalty. Oddly, that was an improvement. Whatever Toronto is doing on the man advantage, the Panthers have found a flaw in it. They had a bunch of gilt-edged short-handed chances on the evening.
Despite their many faults of effort and execution, the Leafs were still hanging on. They went into the third down just one goal. You could not have explained how.
At this point, the two teams began trading blows on equal footing. As good as Woll was, Florida’s Sergei Bobrovsky was even sharper.
Just as Toronto was climbing back in it, Ekman-Larsson was acting up again. He came across the ice and rubbed out Evan Rodrigues while he waited for the puck. Rodrigues dropped like a bag of cement, clutching his head. Initially assessed as a major, Ekman-Larsson got away with a two-minute minor after review.
Per the usual, the team in the lead retreated for the last 10 minutes, while the team chasing it got their tail up. But whenever an opportunity presented itself for Toronto, Bobrovsky was in the way. Not that anyone’s counting, but Auston Matthews has yet to score in this series.
Florida finally pulled away via their other villain, Sam Bennett. After some laggardly play in the neutral zone, Bennett broke away on a two-on-one. Rather than pass, he stopped, drew Woll from his net, went around him and shot into the empty cage.
One suspects that if you’d offered the Leafs this scenario a week ago – a best-of-three with the Stanley Cup champions, knowing they are beatable – they’d have taken it. This has already been their best playoffs in decades. However it ends, it’s unlikely they’ll be raked the way they have so often in recent years.
Possibly as a result, the team seemed positively peppy down in Florida.
“Every day’s a great day,” the Leafs horizontal punching bag for pucks, Tanev, said before Sunday’s tilt.
It’s a wonderful attitude for living, but is it killer?