Maple Leafs' season on brink after Game 5 no-show versus Florida Panthers
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Good stuff, Maple Leafs.
Hell of a time to play your worst game, by far, of the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs.
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Maple Leafs' season on brink after Game 5 no-show versus Florida Panthers Back to video
The Leafs had nothing going on Wednesday night at Scotiabank Arena, losing 6-1 against the Florida Panthers in Game 5 of the second-round series.
The defending Cup champion Panthers have won three in a row to take a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven and can send the Leafs home for the summer with a win in Sunrise in Game 6 on Friday.
The building mostly was empty at the final horn.
On the off-chance the Leafs win on Friday — though the Leafs didn’t do anything on Wednesday that would lead one to believe they can win another game — Game 7 would be in Toronto on Sunday.
The Leafs’ well-paid crew of captain Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander again provided nothing in a playoff game of rather large importance. If that was Marner’s last home game with the Leafs, given his looming free-agent status this summer, no one years from now will recall it with fondness.
Matthews has no goals in the series. No Leafs player, considering the talent, has been as disappointing as Matthews in the second round.
The Leafs couldn’t get out of the defensive zone for most of the night and played like it was the first pre-season game under coach Craig Berube. All of the good steps the Leafs have taken in Berube’s first year behind the Toronto bench were nowhere to be seen in a game that wasn’t a must-win, but might as well have been.
There was no pushback from the Leafs as the Panthers built a 4-0 lead 14 minutes into the second period. By then, boos were becoming louder in the building and more came in the final minute of the second.
Berube’s insertion of David Kampf and Nick Robertson into the lineup in place of Calle Jarnkrok and Pontus Holmberg made no difference.
Robertson scored the Leafs’ only goal with 66 seconds remaining.
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After defenceman Aaron Ekblad put Florida up 1-0 in the first period, three Panthers scored their first goal of the playoffs in the second.
In order, Dmitry Kulikov, Jesper Boqvist and Niko Mikkola beat Joseph Woll. The goals by defencemen Kulikov and Mikkola came after each had time and space to get a shot off. All of those Panthers goals came at even strength.
Kulikov scored off the stick of Scott Laughton, who rang a shot off the post in the first minute of the second while it was still 1-0 for the visitors.
When the Leafs did have the odd scoring chance, Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky didn’t falter. Nylander was stopped on a breakaway before the Ekblad’s goal. Bobrovsky finished with 31 saves.
Max Domi had another undisciplined game for the Leafs. After he couldn’t convince Matthew Tkachuk to fight him in the second period, Domi gave Tkachuk a two-handed chop to the forearm and was sent off for slashing.
A.J. Greer scored at 6:23 of the third period — also his first of the playoffs — and that was it for Woll, who allowed five goals on 25 shots. In came Matt Murray.
Sam Bennett added another Florida goal on a power play.
Fittingly, a Leafs jersey was tossed onto the ice after Greer scored. No one who actually wore it in the game did the crest on the front of the sweater much service.
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