SIMMONS: Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube not intimidated by Cup champion Florida Panthers

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Craig Berube has been scratching, clawing and fighting his way through the many levels of professional hockey for most of the past 38 years, so you can excuse him if he’s not intimidated by the Florida Panthers.

When asked how his Maple Leafs will fare in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs against the defending-champion Panthers, who play a particularly nasty brand of hockey, Berube amused himself with his rhetorical answer.

“Are they mean?” he said, then smiled rather widely.

“They play a hard game, I agree,” said the coach. “They forecheck hard, they’re physical, they’re in your face the whole game.

“I don’t necessarily think it’s mean … We’re a physical team too. And we have to be physical ourselves. We have to initiate as much as possible. You’re going to get banged around and they’re going to come at you and they’re going to hit you, and that’s just part of it.”

And so it begins, the back and forth of a playoff series on the day before the second round between the Maple Leafs and the champion Panthers begins Monday night.
What will this series be? How will it play out? Which team will be able to dictate the style of play against the other?

There are a couple of boxing analogies that come to mind here. First, styles make fights. Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fought classics. George Foreman battered Frazier. Ali outsmarted Foreman. It can be the same in hockey.

The second boxing analogy: Everyone has a game plan, Mike Tyson used to say, until they get punched in the face. You can have a sound game plan against the Panthers and then you eat a stick from Matthew Tkachuk, take a crosscheck from Sam Bennett or a face wash from Brad Marchand and it changes the way you approach the game.

Or, it doesn’t.

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We know pretty much what the Panthers will try to do to the Maple Leafs. What we don’t know is how the Leafs will respond. They have some training about dealing with tight spaces, living here in Toronto.

All you have to is drive around downtown Toronto on any given day and it equates in some way to this hockey series. You know you have to go somewhere. You know it’s not easy to get there. You know there’s all kinds of traffic and construction. But you still have to find a way to get it done.

That’s what it will be like for Auston Matthews and the rest of the Maple Leafs in this series. Space will be limited. Time will be limited. On most shifts in most playoff games, nothing happens. But then you have to take advantage of that one shift or two shifts when something opens your way.

Berube has been talking to the team a lot about playing in tight spaces. About playing with little room on the ice. The Leafs are uber-talented up front with Matthews, new dad Mitch Marner and the wayward son, William Nylander, all of whom were part of the 4-Nations tournament a few months back.

But the rather stacked Panthers had nine players in that tournament, including captain Sasha Barkov, Team USA leader Tkachuk, sound defensive players such as Gustav Forsling on defence and third-liners Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen.

The biggest advantage on paper in this series is the difference between third lines: Lundell centres hugely underrated Luostarinen and Marchand. The Leafs third line has been a work in progress all year long. Look for the Leafs to continue to treat the Scott Laughton-centred fourth unit like more of a third line in this series.

Berube may have to find the right match against Lundell, with Barkov centring one line and Bennett another.

This is really new territory for Matthews and Marner. They have struggled to produce in playoff series in the past. They have struggled to succeed when there is little open ice. But in the first round, in particular Matthews, he might have been the best player in the series when all 200 feet of the game are taken into account.

He was doing the Barkov thing and now must do it head-to-head against Barkov. The challenge for Berube in the games at home is to take advantage of last change. That would keep Barkov and Forsling away from Matthews and Marner.

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But it would still wind up with Lundell and a defenceman such as Aaron Ekblad against the Leafs’ first line. That’s not easy, either.

The wild card for the Leafs is always Nylander. He doesn’t fit any regular descriptions. He is capable of scoring at almost any time or giving up something similar in the wrong end. Florida has no one similar to him. Most NHL teams don’t.

Berube needs the Leafs to be composed against the Panthers. There was a lot of talk of composure on Sunday. Staying composed against Florida’s supposed meanness. Composed against its physical play. Composed dealing with the Panthers crossing the line, if and when they do so.

“Talk about composure,” Berube said, referring to Nylander. “He’s pretty composed, maybe sometimes too much.”

Then he laughed again. Everybody did. You can laugh now. The not-so-funny part begins on Monday night.

ssimmons@postmedia.com
X: @simmonssteve