Brad Marchand, Florida Panthers head home down 2-0: 'We have our work cut out'
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Brad Marchand sees a big difference in these Maple Leafs.
Time was, Marchand and the Boston Bruins owned the Leafs in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
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Brad Marchand, Florida Panthers head home down 2-0: 'We have our work cut out' Back to video
We won’t rehash the details. You know what we’re talking about.
This is 2025 and Marchand is now with the defending Cup champion Florida Panthers.
It’s a group of Panthers that heads home down 2-0 in the best-of-seven, second-round series after the Leafs won 4-3 on Wednesday night at Scotiabank Arena.
“They’re continuing to get better and grow as a group,” Marchand said in an empty Florida dressing room following the loss. “They brought a lot of good pieces in at the deadline and the off-season to address their back end. They’re heavy back there.
“Their coaching has changed, and their structure is very, very good right now, especially in the D zone. They don’t give up a whole lot around the net.
“We knew it was going to be a really tough battle. We didn’t expect to roll over them by any means. We have our work cut out. They’re playing really well, and their top guys are capitalizing on every opportunity, it seems like.”
Though the Panthers forecheck did give the Leafs fits at times in Game 2 — Toronto had 15 giveaways to Florida’s five when the game ended — the visitors didn’t execute on the level that the Leafs did. The Leafs’ ability to score off the rush wasn’t something the club had to lean on much during the regular season, but they were able to take advantage of the Panthers’ inability to recover on Wednesday.
William Nylander and Max Domi both scored on odd-man rushes.
“It seemed like every time we gave them the opportunity to get above us, they created something or capitalized on it,” Marchand said. “It just shows how dangerous they are.
“It doesn’t take much for them to score. We have to make sure that we’re pretty much perfect out there on our defensive coverage.”
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In the past, star goalie Sergei Bobrovsky could be relied upon to make timely saves and bail his teammates out of trouble if it was required. That hasn’t happened through the first two games of the series. The Leafs have registered 50 shots on the veteran netminder and scored on nine of them.
And it took just 17 seconds for the Leafs to respond after the Panthers’ Anton Lundell tied the game 3-3 at 5:33 of the third. At 5:50, Mitch Marner beat Bobrovsky on a shot that should have been stopped.
“Didn’t love his first game,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said of Bobrovsky. “I thought up until the fourth one (the winner by Marner) … I don’t look at him for any of the first three.
“The danger on the rush is significant. The goalie is going to be fine.”
By no means are Panthers out of the series. There’s plenty of hockey left, as the saying goes. Having said that, the Panthers are faced with the prospect of beating the Leafs in four times, with just five chances to do so, to advance to the Eastern Conference final.
And in the previous two years in the playoffs, the only time the Panthers were down 2-0 in a series was the 2023 Cup final against Vegas. The Golden Knights won in five games.
The experience of winning the Cup last spring has to be factor that the Panthers conjure heading into Game 3 on Friday night in Sunrise.
“That’s the mentality,” defenceman Aaron Ekblad said. “Get home, get our crowd behind us, and put together a good home game.
“It was a tight game all the way through. That’s the kind of game that we expect to play, and we’re comfortable in those games. They got the best of us in their building, and we’ll find a way to do it in ours.”
Said Maurice: “Come out the road, we lost two one-goal games, we get to go back home now.”
We note that Maurice’s usual attempts at humour were nowhere to be found in his post-game availability. Neither was the flavour of smugness that came through when he was defending Sam Bennett after Game 1.
Could the playoff scars earned by the Panthers help lead to a victory at home on Friday, and if not, in Game 4 on Sunday? Sure they could. We’re talking about a hell of a team here.
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Keep in mind, though, that the Leafs haven’t played their best hockey in the series, yet have managed to put themselves in control with two wins.
Toronto has done nothing to suggest it will falter in south Florida.
Marchand is right. These Leafs are different.
“It’s one day at a time,” Marchand said. “We’re OK in here. We have a lot of belief in our group, in our room, our experience.
“They’re fighting for their lives. They came to play in this round. We see that.
“But these series can change on a dime and and it’s all about that next one. We’re living for tomorrow right now, and that’s how we’ll prepare.”
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