The Panthers beat the Maple Leafs en route to their Stanley Cup Final in 2023, so they are familiar with the returning team’s stars like Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander.
But after winning the Stanley Cup last year, three former Florida contributors — defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson, forward Steven Lorentz and goalie Anthony Stolarz — left for Toronto. Now the Panthers will have to take down their former teammates as they try to take another step toward repeating as Stanley Cup champions. Florida and Toronto start their second-round playoff series Monday at 8 p.m. in Toronto.
“Good for all of them,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “I think Oliver Ekman-Larsson had established his career long before he came to us and was a big part of our success last year. But both those men — Steve Lorentz and Anthony — are at a new level, a new opportunity for them in Toronto, and they’ve made the most of it. They’ve played very, very well. We’re happy for them.
“Those guys — they’re not just ‘were’ a big part of it; that story gets to endure in our locker room for the men that played, so they still are a big part of that story. I’m happy they’ve been able to find a place where their opportunity and their input to the success of the Toronto Maple Leafs is really important.”
Both Ekman-Larsson and Lorentz are playing more for Toronto than they did for the Panthers last year, but Stolarz has been one of the Maple Leafs’ headliners.
Stolarz, who excelled when backing up Sergei Bobrovsky last year, started a career-high 33 games and rewarded Toronto with a 21-8 record, a league-leading .926 save percentage and a 2.14 goals-against average. Now he and Bobrovsky will go head-to-head.
“We had a good relationship, yeah, that’s true,” Bobrovsky said. “It was a good partnership, as well, last year. It’s going to be good. It’s going to be fun. He’s a good goalie.”
Despite the familiar faces of former Panthers and Maple Leaf veterans, Maurice said there is not much carry-over from the 2023 series, which Florida won in five games.
“There’s no value of any history with that other than we learned in Game 4 of that series what it’s like to go into a clinching game and try to hope out a win,” Maurice said. “We’ve carried that lesson forward with us. I think we learned that. But all the other players have completely changed. They’ve also had a fairly significant style change in their game with the coaching change. It was still our first year here, so we had a style change, too. … Half our teams are different, so there’s not much at all to be used from that series.”
The Panthers have the same coach and many of the same stars. But when they faced Toronto in 2023, they were an upstart No. 8 seed hat had just taken down one of the best regular-season teams in league history. Two years later, they are reigning champions with a lot more postseason experience.
“I think experience is the one aspect of it,” captain Aleksander Barkov said. “We have a lot of guys who went through those series and that year and last year and now this year. We have a lot more experience playing in the playoffs. But every year is different.”
The complete second-round Florida-Toronto schedule:
Game 1: Panthers at Maple Leafs, Monday, 8 p.m.
Game 2: Panthers at Maple Leafs, Wednesday, 7 p.m.
Game 3: Maple Leafs at Panthers, Friday, Time TBD
Game 4: Maple Leafs at Panthers, Sunday, May 11, Time TBD
Game 5: Panthers at Maple Leafs, Wednesday, May 14, Time TBD, if necessary
Game 6: Maple Leafs at Panthers, Friday, May 16,Time TBD, if necessary
Game 7: Panthers at Maple Leafs, Sunday, May 18, Time TBD, if necessary
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