{"id":549743,"date":"2026-04-10T19:03:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T19:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/549743\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T19:03:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T19:03:30","slug":"maple-leafs-panthers-face-off-in-position-they-never-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/549743\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs, Panthers face off in position they never expected"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> and Florida Panthers<\/a> faced off in a much bigger matchup last spring.<\/p>\n

This time around, on Saturday night, it’ll be a depressing showdown instead.<\/p>\n

The Leafs and Panthers clashed in the playoffs at the end of the 2024-25 season as Florida was on its way to repeating as Stanley Cup champs.<\/p>\n

Now, both have been eliminated from playoff contention. Toronto hosts Florida on Saturday night, but the stakes aren’t much of anything at all.<\/p>\n

Really, only draft pick positioning is on the line.<\/p>\n

In that regard, Florida is in a safer spot than Toronto. The Panthers traded away their first-round pick for this year but with protections — if it’s top-10, they keep it, which seems likely at this point even if it didn’t seem that way when they traded it.<\/p>\n

The Maple Leafs only keep their pick if it’s top-five. If not, it goes to the Bruins.<\/p>\n

Entering Saturday’s game, the Leafs seem likely to have the sixth-best lottery odds, which makes it more likely that the selection conveys to Boston than stays in Toronto.<\/p>\n

Not that the players on the ice have any part in this, but the Maple Leafs have more motivation to lose than the Panthers. Toronto has put together a couple of convincing losses in the row, and they aren’t exactly putting the best roster out on the ice at the moment, either.<\/p>\n

It’s certainly a far cry from an intense playoff series. In some years, this may have been an end-of-season appetizer for the bigger games.<\/p>\n

This year, though, the Maple Leafs and Panthers are just waiting for it to be over.<\/p>\n

More NHL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers faced off in a much bigger matchup last spring. This time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[5,20,5172,4,66,31,5171],"class_list":{"0":"post-549743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-maple-leafs","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-maple-leafs","10":"tag-mapleleafs","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-toronto","13":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","14":"tag-torontomapleleafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116381969064224414","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}