'Gonna be a playoff game': Maple Leafs prep for nasty Marchand, Panthers

TORONTO — The Toronto Maple Leafs have a chance to do something they’ve only done twice over the past 60 years.

Win their division.

Since earning the No. 1 seed in the spring of 1963 — when The Beach Boys' Surfin’ U.S.A. ruled the charts and British entrepreneur Edward Craven Walker was busy inventing the lava lamp — the Maple Leafs captured the Northeast Division in 2000, the one-off, pandemic-forced North Division in 2021, and that’s it. Never the Atlantic.

Over that same time span, to put this month’s opportunity into perspective, the Leafs have finished sixth in their division five times and fifth on 11 occasions.

This year, Toronto controls its own regular-season destiny with just eight games remaining.

So why not play hard, snatch a top seed, and draw a weaker wild-card opponent?

“It’s in the mindset, for sure,” captain Auston Matthews told reporters, following Tuesday’s quick practice. “The standings are really tight, and you want to go out and get that.”

While the leaders of the NHL’s other three divisional races — Vegas in the Pacific, Winnipeg in the Central, Washington in the Metropolitan — have the checkered flag in sight and tumbleweeds in the rearview, the Maple Leafs are in a three-horse sprint with the Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning. A couple of bitter rivals that ended two of their past three seasons.

The Atlantic is jump ball, and three outstretched palms are reaching for the ol’ Spalding.

Buoyed by a five-point road trip to California, the Leafs now hold a tenuous one-point lead and have a 41.8 per cent chance of keeping first place, according to MoneyPuck.com. After winning four straight, the Lightning are up to 42.1 per cent odds, and the Panthers' chances have dipped to 16.1 per cent after a couple stunning L's to the feel-good Canadiens.

Runner-ups get each other. Yikes.

Which is why Wednesday’s showdown between the rested Maple Leafs and the visiting champions, who will arrive tired after Tuesday’s blown lead at the Bell Centre, looms so large.

“It’s important,” Matthew Knies stressed. “It’s gonna be a playoff game.”

“We know the quality of team they have over there. We know what style they like to play,” added starting goalie Anthony Stolarz, one of three Panthers free agents the Leafs pilfered right from the parade.

“Everyone here knows the significance of the game.”

Seven of Toronto’s final eight games come against opponents that are either post-season locks or scrapping to extend their campaigns. Three of those matches represent potential four-point swings against the Sunshine State squads.

The Lightning — arguably the most consistent franchise of the cap era — don’t feel like an impossible matchup, what with the Leafs’ eliminating them in 2023 and their recent humanization of Andrei Vasilevskiy.

But the Panthers — now with 100 per cent more Brad Marchand, Matthew Tkachuk ramping toward health, and the days of Aaron Ekblad’s PED ban dwindling — are another story.

Not only did Paul Maurice’s crew snuff out this Leafs core’s longest playoff run at five wins (in 2023), but the Cats have also come out on top in both meetings this season.

“They’ve been tight games every time we’ve played them,” Matthews said. “It’ll be a good test, good challenge for us.”

All due respect to the Presidents’ Trophy–hunting Capitals, but the Eastern Conference still goes through Sunrise.

The two-time defending Prince of Wales Trophy winners have mastered the style Toronto’s Craig Berube has tried to instill in Toronto: chip, chase, punish, defend.

At their best, Maurice’s charges suffocate the neutral zone and strike fear into those poor defencemen retrieving dump-ins. They agitate and initiate and love to sucker the frustrated into drawing penalties.

“You can’t react to it,” Berube warned. “Stand your ground. But you gotta be careful with taking the extra shot or swing. It’s hard. But that’s what they want, and you can’t get drawn into it.”

Just as Berube is leaning toward Game 1 frontrunner Stolarz for Wednesday’s start, Maurice saved his No. 1, Sergei Bobrovsky, for the Toronto trip.

And this will mark the first time the Leafs get an up-close look at old nemesis Marchand wearing something other Black and Gold.

“Gives them a bit of a boost for sure,” Matthews said.

“A good get for them,” Stolarz added. “He’s a helluva player and someone who has a lot of playoff experience and knows how to get under guys’ skin.”

The 11th-hour, in-division Marchand trade on March 7 caught the hockey world by surprise and injected “another gear of confidence,” Sam Bennett said, into a team that has no shortage of swagger.

Maurice told reporters Tuesday that the Marchand acquisition reminds him of the time GM Bill Zito scooped up Eric Staal: a former rival captain and champion willing to kill penalties and assume a less offensively focused role in order to contribute to another Cup bid.

“The heart-and-soul kinda gamers, especially as they get later in their career, (think): Just gimme a chance to play,” Maurice explained.

“Yeah, we added a real good player. For sure. But the biggest benefit is you add an excited veteran guy that knows he’s not playing 10 more years. He’s on the back nine now. And those guys just cherish every day at the rink.”

Just as the Maple Leafs should cherish Wednesday’s opportunity at their rink — to catch a good team that's tired, to extend their breathing room atop the Atlantic, to build on a win streak and flex some all-too-rare dominance against a divisional power.

“You want to play your best hockey toward the end of the season,” Knies said. “Your last game should be your best game.”

One-Timers: John Tavares was named the NHL’s Second Star of the Month.... With Toronto winning back-to-back games in California with Nick Robertson scratched, the winger is likely to watch a third straight game from the press box.... Long absent veterans Max Pacioretty and Jani Hakanpää (both on LTIR) practised with the main group Tuesday. “Hopefully they can get healthy and be part of the team at some point,” Berube said.

Maple Leafs projected lineup Wednesday vs. Florida Panthers:

Knies – Matthews – Marner
McMann – Tavares – Nylander
Laughton – Domi – Järnkrok
Holmberg – Kampf – Lorentz

Rielly – Carlo
McCabe – Tanev
Benoit – Ekman-Larsson

Stolarz starts
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