Mirtle: Panthers are hammering Maple Leafs in one key area. Will it matter?

New York Times

10-05-2025

This one felt like a huge missed opportunity. And probably will for a while, especially if it doesn't ultimately go their way.
The Toronto Maple Leafs had an early 2-0 lead, six minutes into Game 3. Then a 3-1 lead early in the second period, thanks to two pretty goals from John Tavares. They looked great, and it felt right there for the Leafs to take a 3-0 series lead against the defending Stanley Cup champions, something that had only happened five times in NHL history.
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It's a wild stat. It speaks to how you don't often get the champs down on the mat like that, into a hole they likely can't come back from. But for the first time in this series, the Florida Panthers were able to push back with a counterpunch that worked. In a series they had led all of 11 minutes in up until that point, they piled up three quick goals in the second period to finally push in front for a longer stretch. They took control.
It took overtime to finally salt the victory away, on a Brad Marchand (of course) shot from distance that deflected in front. But there's no denying this one hurt.
Literally.
BRAD MARCHAND 🫡
His @Energizer overtime winner gives the @FlaPanthers the Game 3 victory! #StanleyCup pic.twitter.com/lRMM1ph39h
— NHL (@NHL) May 10, 2025
Along the way, as the Panthers took advantage of a bit of leaky Leafs goaltending and brain farts from their top players, they also started to really hit.
They hit on the forecheck. They hit in the neutral zone. They hit them here. They hit them there. They hit them anywhere. (They would hit them in a house. They would hit them with a mouse.)
At the end of the night, Florida had piled up 64 hits, giving them a league-leading 154 in the second round so far.
The second-place team — Toronto — has only 109.
How ridiculous a number is 64 hits in a game? Well, no team did it in the regular season in 1,312 games. The Panthers were far and away the NHL's most hit-happy team in the league during the season, with 29.8 hits per game. Even taking overtime out of the equation and looking at hits per 60 minutes, Florida is hitting roughly 60 percent more frequently than it did during the year, which is hard to do in a series where the balance of play has been close.
It's not even just their depth players doing it, either. Carter Verhaeghe has 19 hits in this series. Sam Bennett and Aleksander Barkov have 15 and 14, respectively. Panthers coach Paul Maurice saw fit to sub in an entirely new, fresh fourth line in Game 3 to wreak havoc; even though they hardly played, they still rang up 11 hits combined.
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They're all doing it. It's their identity, and the relentless pressure often works.
You could tell who they were hitting, too. Chris Tanev, perhaps Toronto's MVP in these playoffs, absorbed 10 in Friday's loss. Brandon Carlo, Simon Benoit and Morgan Rielly all took eight or nine apiece.
When Carlo went flying into the end boards after making an outlet pass, Leafs fans held their breath a bit given what he's meant to their top four. Then Tanev left the game, and fans were probably hyperventilating.
(The coach later said it was an equipment issue. He didn't specify if said equipment was Tanev's entire upper body.)
Tanev, 35, has been a breakout machine for this Leafs team, going back to get pucks and returning them like a tennis ball machine to teammates in the right places, again and again. But he's taken a ton of abuse in doing so, taking 28 hits in his series and now 71 in the playoffs.
The next closest player in the entire league in that stat? Rielly, with 39 bangs to his body.
Hockey Night in Canada's Kevin Bieksa pointed out on the broadcast that it felt like an awful lot, the punishment Tanev handles to make a play. He advised that maybe he doesn't need to stand his ground as often, that he could choose to pick his spots when it's, say, a fourth-line mutant who probably isn't going to be able to make a skill play no matter what.
But that's who Tanev is. It's why the Leafs wanted him. Why they needed him and gave him a six-year deal to bring him home. He blocks shots and eats hits like it's nothing. As coach Craig Berube has said during these playoffs, it's been contagious for a team that hasn't been known for this style of play until now. (How is Tanev not wearing a letter at this point, by the way?)
Friday's loss was a missed opportunity, not only because going up 3-0 is close to a sure thing for moving on. It would have also been a chance to try and get out of this series in one piece, to give the Leafs D core a chance to recover from what feels like it could turn into a war of attrition any moment.
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To date, the only casualty of the barrage has been netminder Anthony Stolarz. But six or seven games of this type of pounding are going to take a toll. It's the Panthers' way.
The Leafs are still in a great position here, with a chance to win on Sunday to give them a 3-1 lead coming home, with Game 5 and Game 7 (if necessary) at Scotiabank Arena. They've kept their composure all season, and they've ramped up their own physicality considerably to succeed in these games.
The real test, however, was always going to be with the series on the line, in elimination games, when the elbows are — quite literally — up, and the cheap shots aren't always going to be called.
The Leafs have passed in a lot of ways so far, through nine hard-fought playoff games. This series is right there for them, if they continue to push and play the way they have.
But getting two more wins is going to hurt. And you wonder if everyone will be left standing, even if they pull it off.