How much farther can Leafs go with a merely mortal Auston Matthews this postseason?

Welcome to the deep waters, Toronto Maple Leafs. Having fun?

It sure didn’t look like it for much of Game 4 against the Florida Panthers Sunday night. It was a physical, chippy affair, with both teams taking plenty of liberties before and after the whistles. For the Panthers, now playing their 10^th playoff series in the past three springs, the trench warfare is comfortable. It’s where the NHL’s toughest team does its finest, grimiest work. For the Leafs? It’s new, at least for much of the core group. The likes of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, John Tavares and Matthew Knies have never made it to a 2-2 series in Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Ten games into their 2025 postseason run, the body blows are clearly starting to take their toll. We saw a lot of Toronto players hanging their heads and sucking wind on the bench during their 2-0 defeat Sunday night.

And you know what? That’s absolutely OK, and the fan base should embrace it, not lament it. This team is playing the big-boy games in mid-May now. The defending Stanley Cup champions were never going to roll over. Toronto is starting to see what physical sacrifices are required if it wants to play into June. The Leafs’ tortured fan base may feel like the momentum has swung too far Florida’s way now, but, hey, the Leafs were an overtime goal away from a 3-0 series lead in Game 3. Goaltender Joseph Woll’s God Mode setting may have switched on in Game 4, easily his best effort of the postseason so far. Toronto gets a two-day break and holds home ice for a best of three now. Pretty much anyone would’ve taken that before the series, which most prognosticators, myself included, mistakenly expected Florida to breeze through.

Over the next three to five days, this incarnation of the Leafs will answer the question of how tough they really are, whether they’re capable of pushing through the pain and doubt, whether coach Craig Berube has truly transformed the team’s identity and whether the core group, most notably pending UFA Marner, is worthy of bringing back for next season and beyond. Are the Leafs capable of hitting back after eating a metaphorical boot to the solar plexus over the weekend?

Maybe. They were certainly good enough in Games 1 and 2. They didn’t blink to open Game 3. And while Game 4 was a disappointment, it was a two-goal loss in which they had to kill four first-period penalties, one in which they actually found their legs in the third period, generating sufficient quality looks to tie the game but stymied by goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. The extra off day should help, and they’ll get a lift from a Scotiabank Arena crowd that has been – gasp! – an asset in Round 2.

The Panthers, of course, won’t flinch if the Leafs come out with extra vigor in Game 5. The champions have seen pretty much every scenario during their consecutive runs to the Stanley Cup Final. They’ve dominated the scoring chances and expected goals at 5-on-5 in every game of this series so far. Even if the Leafs emerge looking less flat in Game 5 and beyond and find the courage to push through the pain…will it be enough if they don’t have a superstar scorer to take them on his back?

That’s right: they don’t. Not this season. We still don’t know exactly what’s ailing Matthews, but whether it’s a back, a hand, maybe both, it has changed him as a player. It’s no secret he’s missing nets an alarming rate this postseason, and his long- and medium-range shooting, arguably the best of a generation, have been hindered pretty much all season, hence the drop from 69 to 33 goals (in 67 games) in the regular season. His speed has clearly been sapped. His line is now funnelling chances to Knies as the featured goal-scoring threat.

This isn’t to harp on Matthews and claim he’s failing his team, as many are across social media. He has 10 points in 10 games. He’s playing a physical game on the forecheck. No Leaf forward has blocked more shots this postseason. He’s winning 57.4 percent of his faceoffs. He leads the team in expected goals, individual shot attempts, individual scoring chances and individual high-danger chances this postseason. Matthews has played elite hockey.

But elite is not his standard, is it? His standard is supposed to be otherworldly. That’s what allows him to take over games and be the deadliest player on the ice. He showed it two years ago when the Leafs rallied from a 4-1 third-period deficit to defeat the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 4 of the first round; he scored twice in that comeback. He showed it in Game 2 against the Boston Bruins last spring, when he iced it with a third-period breakaway goal.

In the 2025 playoffs: It’s Knies and Nylander providing those big-time lifts more than anyone else for Toronto. Matthews, meanwhile, has been “only” reduced to, say, a clone of Anze Kopitar, a great two-way center using his size and strength to create opportunities for others. As a threat himself? Matthews is scoring on five percent of his shots. He entered this season as a 16.2 percent career shooter. He’s averaging 9.78 shots on goal per 60 at 5-on-5 in these playoffs; he sat between 11 and 14 shots per 60 in the each of the previous seven postseasons.

It doesn’t seem likely anything will change in Matthews’ game for the balance of this postseason. Again, it’s not a knock on Matthews’ heart. If anything, he’s proven how much heart he does have by grinding through his ailments and still being such an effective player. But whatever injury or injuries are affecting him won’t be resolved until the summer in the best-case scenario. That means the ‘Kopitar’ version of Matthews might be all Toronto gets for the rest of this run.

And if that’s the case, and the Leafs don’t in fact have their all-world superhero to lift them up, will it be enough? A healthy Matthews might have ended Game 3 in overtime. He might have tied the game on the power play in Game 4 rather than rifling a slapshot over the net. But if Toronto can’t count on him to seize control of a game…it will need to rely on a team effort to topple the champs.

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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