The Toronto Maple Leafs can learn from the Florida Panthers success this postseason because it’s not a fluke that they’re in the Stanley Cup Finals.
Six weeks ago, Toronto Maple Leafs fans were hopeful that this was finally the year, but it looks like it’s the Florida Panthers’ year instead. Although they have four wins to go until they’re Stanley Cup champions, this is a team of destiny.
If you bet on the Panthers to win the Eastern Conference at the start of the playoffs, you’d be a very rich person. Heck, even if you bet on them to beat the Boston Bruins in the First Round, you would have had fantastic odds.
When they were down 3-1 in the First Round, nobody in the world expected them to be in the place that they are today, except for the players in that Panthers dressing room. When the team looked down and out, it was their leader Matthew Tkachuk who gave them hope and guided them to a 4-3 series victory.
Obviously there were more players than him that got it done, but it was his leadership that gave the team belief and that belief eventually turned into a reality.
Toronto Maple Leafs Could Learn From Florida Panthers Success
When you look at the make-up of the Leafs dressing room, do you see player that resembles Tkachuk in any way?
Not really.
The only person, in my opinion, who has that leadership skill and can bring it in the playoffs is Ryan O’Reilly, but he’s a pending UFA. With the uncertainty of his return, I don’t trust Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, John Tavares and William Nylander to will this team to victory.
They’re all incredibly skilled and can win in the regular season, but there’s no fire in their eyes during losses. It’s all the same B.S quotes after a loss and something needs to change as a result.
Although the Panthers road to the Stanley Cup Finals was unlikely, it’s not that crazy when you look at their team. They used three recipes that are very similar with any team that reaches a Cup Final.
They had a superstar player who put the team on his back and willed them to victory, scoring in the biggest moments with Tkachuk. They complemented that with a number-one defenseman in Brendon Montour who’s logging more than 27 minutes of ice-time per night and the biggest thing, obviously, is that they’ve received world-class goaltending from Sergei Bobrovsky.
Over the years, the Leafs have always had the offensive firepower to win a series, yet it’s been those two other attributes that have cost them.
The Toronto Maple Leafs need a number-one defenseman and a number-one goaltender ASAP. There are obviously examples of teams who have won a Stanley Cup without a legit number-one goaltender (Colorado Avalanche, 2022) or a team without a number-one defenseman (Pittsburgh Penguins, 2017), but they at least had two of the three attributes.
When you look back at the Leafs team this year, they only had one of those three recipes, so as a result, it was basically going to be impossible that they were going to find a way to win 16 games in the spring this year.
You can say that the Panthers are a Cinderella story because they were a wild-card team, but realistically, they were just an underperforming regular season team who had all of the attributes to win a Stanley Cup.
You never know how many opportunities like this you’re going to get, so when you make the playoffs, you need to capitalize. Hopefully the Toronto Maple Leafs can learn from Florida’s success because they’ve got a lot of work to do still before they can finally win a Stanley Cup.