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2nd Rnd '25 Playoffs: Leafs vs Panthers - Flo-Rida them onto the ECF - LFG!

leafman101 said:
The 3 lowest 5v5 chance round 1 series were:

1. Toronto/Ottawa: 4.14
2. Blues/Jets: 4.46
3. Panthers/Lighting: 4.67

So this series will be similar just instead of the chances going to Stutzle, Brady, Batherson, Giroux and Perron they will go to M. Tkachuk, Barkov, Reinhart, Verhage and Marchand. Plus the Panthers are an actually physical team.

All the big guns are going to have to show up again.

Also will have to closely watch if the Panthers have Stolarz number or vice versa. He had two stinkers against them in the regular season.
Click to expand...
I don’t think there’s much of a gulf in skill / scoring ability at the top of the lineups but the panthers physicality and quickness on the puck is much better than Ottawas
 
I think it was game 2 that was the real kick in the nuts because we came out strong, built an early 2 goal lead, then Bennett suplexed Knies, then Sammy absolutely fucked us with two shit goals in the first minute of the 2nd.
 
I didn’t remember we went down 0-3 to them. We’ll obviously have to do a lot better.

Even if we lose in 7, a second round loss won’t be acceptable unfortunately. Hearing the same “once again, the Leafs failed to advance deeply in the playoffs” again would suck.
 
Don't like starting at home with the crowd we draw (why can't you all just cheer? the whole game), but last change probably matters here so there's that.

Good thing I'm not playing, 'cause I have zero confidence.

If they win it will because they beat they better team somehow despite being out-corsi'ed and losing the eye test as well.

Whatever happens, when this is over Matthews better tell us what the fuck is going on and how he plans to fix it before his contract is up.
 
First Round Stats:

1746208341326.png​


Overall:

- Both teams roll a two-way big minute solid usage #1 line.
- Both teams roll a sheltered #2 offensive line
- Both teams roll a clear defensive shutdown pairing, and then a pairing with one offensive guy and one big defensive guy, and then solid usage 3rd pairing.

Really not much difference at all in usage and deployment in all those areas. The big difference in usage is in the bottom 6 forwards.

- Sens roll an uber-3rd line of Luostarinen-Lundell-Marchand which is not only a shutdown line but one with offense. This line was the difference maker in round 1 for the panthers. In fact it was actually their #2 line, playing much more and much tougher minutes than the Bennett line. They don't play the leftover 4th line much at all, and it's not very good when they do.
- Leafs roll two evenly played bottom-6 lines, one offensive and one defensive. The offensive bottom 6 line was a massive problem in round 1 until the last game. Hopefully last night was a model they can build on - basically Holmberg on that line to give it some stability, with more of an offensive guy going onto line 2 instead.

- goalies are a coinflip imo. we would have an advantage if coach was willing to play Woll and just go with the hotter hand but i doubt he'll do that.



In round 1, both the #1 lines performed similarly at 5v5. Same with the #2 lines (both lines saw different 3rd guys during the series as well). Leafs got a solid performance from their checking line but the panthers got a dominant performance from theirs. The leafs scoring bottom 6 line should be a strength in comparison to the Panthers' 4th line but were kinda unplayable for most of round 1. This needs to be fixed pronto (and may have been with the line swap last night.

I don't see a reason why their should be a big difference in the dcorps this series - though McCabe's round 1 performance has me a bit worried. Can't have him playing like that because Forsling is always excellent. One thing the Leafs will hopefully exploit is the poor footspeed on the Panthers' rightside - particularly Ekblad and Jones, who they should be able to turnstile regularly.


Now while the Panthers' 3rd line looked great in round 1, a lot of that is also because the Bolts had no bottom-6 to speak of. Bjorkstrand injury didn't help, but even worse is that it turned out that Gourde couldn't hack it at C anymore, and he was exclusively a winger this series. That left them with Paul as the 3C, even though he's more of a winger, and even worse he only had borderline NHL fodder like Goncalves and Geekie to play with (which ended up forcing them to take good players off the top two lines to try and make the depth work). And of course the bolts 4th line is mostly guys who shouldn't be in the nhl at all anymore (glendinging, girgensons, Chaffee) and barely played.

Also note that the Panthers' didn't really slow down the Bolts' top line at all - Kucherov and Point were pretty dominant as usual. On the other hand, their suprisingly great regular season Cirelli-Hagel 2nd line combo that drove so much of their surprising regular season resurgence turned out to be not so great in this series. Not shocking to me as this also happened in our head to heads against TB this year (also happened for Team Canada tbh!).

The leafs really should be a tougher matchup. The top-2 lines should be able to go head to head against each other without much issue. And the Leafs should have 2 useful bottom 6 lines for different situations that shouldnt' get eaten up like the bolts' bottom 6 did. And player by player i think the dcorps match up pretty similary as well, especially if Benoit can keep up his not-awful play.


Just want to do a quick check on how the Panthers actually matched the Bolts:

Barkov vs: Point 14:10, Paul 5:58, Cirelli 4:25, Glendening 0:28
Bennett vs: Cirelli 12:33, Point 7:48, Paul 6:42, Glendening 3:43
Lundell vs: Paul 8:00, Cirelli 6:13, Point 6:09, Glendening 3:19
Sturm vs: Glendening 3:21, Paul 3:06, Cirelli 2:49, Point 2:04

So yeah they pretty much rolled their lines against each other in order. Though tbh I think a lot of that was probably Cooper trying to get Cirelli out against the Bennett line.

I kinda expect both Brooby and Maurice to be fine with the #1 lines up against each other. I think both will probably try to get their checking lines out against the opposing #2 lines a bit more than happened in their 1st round tho.


It's really pretty crucial that the Leafs' improvement from the line change from last night actually is real. I don't know why the McMann-Domi-Pacioretty combo was so dreadful together tbh. That looks to me like a combo that should cause plenty of problems but it was just a disaster. I don't know which winger fits best on the 2nd line but I think it's probably true that Holmberg balances out Domi's weaknesses nicely on that line, so that combo should probably stick. I also think that Patches is more of a natural trigger man for Domi than McMann is, and that McMann's speed could help Tavares more on the 2nd line. Personally I'd go with McMann-Tavares-Nylander and Pacioretty-Domi-Holmberg.
 
Did anyone get a good read on whether Holmberg was actually centering that line last night? Domi took all the faceoffs i know, and it looked to me like Holmberg was playing the winger role mostly.
 
here's how the matchup looks using 2-year Regular Season numbers:


1746210350871.png​
 
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