Assessing Maple Leafs' 3 potential 1st-round playoff opponents

The regular season is just about over, which means it's almost time for the constant, stomach-churning anxiety of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Toronto Maple Leafs have once again punched their ticket to the dance, so why not size up their potential first-round partners?

First up, here's how the top of the Atlantic Division looks as of Thursday morning:

Let's dig into the matchups, beginning with Toronto's most likely adversaries.

Ottawa Senators

This season's head-to-head:

Last playoff meeting: 2004, Maple Leafs won first-round series in Game 7.

If the postseason started today, we'd be treated to the first playoff edition of the Battle of Ontario in 21 years.

Here's why that could be disastrous for the Maple Leafs: Ottawa swept the regular-season series this year and owns a 6-1-0 record against Toronto over the past two campaigns. The Senators play their provincial rivals hard, and this time they'll have the added motivation of making the playoffs for the first time since 2017. This will be the Brady Tkachuk-led core's first taste of the postseason, and the captain already showed a propensity to rise in big moments with three goals at the 4 Nations Face-Off (Tkachuk is currently injured, but he should be fine for the playoffs). The Senators know they're underdogs, and that feisty, scrappy label fits them to a tee.

The flip side of that is Toronto may have an advantage as the more battle-tested team. The Leafs' core has made the playoffs in each of the past eight seasons, racking up 57 games of postseason experience. Yes, they've only won one series over that span, but this time, they're led by hard-nosed head coach Craig Berube, who won the Cup with the St. Louis Blues in 2019. On paper, Toronto is playing a style better suited to the postseason under Berube, but fans won't know for certain until the puck drops on Game 1.

Florida Panthers

This season's head-to-head:

Last playoff meeting: 2023, Panthers won second-round series in Game 5.

There's a world in which the Leafs win the Atlantic for the first time and their reward is ... an opening-round matchup against the defending champions.

That's not an enviable fate, even though the Panthers were slumping prior to Tuesday's dominant victory against the Maple Leafs. The win snapped Florida's first five-game losing streak since the 2018-19 season. Injuries played a significant part in the Cats' skid, as Matthew Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Gustav Forsling, and Dmitry Kulikov have each missed time. Florida head coach Paul Maurice said he's more concerned with getting healthy than the team's seeding, and it's easy to understand why. With two straight Stanley Cup Final appearances under their belt, the Panthers have been there before, which is something these Maple Leafs can't say.

Potentially working in the Leafs' favor is that two deep playoff runs and an emotional 4 Nations add up to a ton of hockey for Florida. The clubs' playoff matchup two years ago was also a physical slog, with one goal deciding all but one contest. If fatigue catches up to the Panthers, and goalie Anthony Stolarz can make that one extra save in his first opportunity as a postseason starter, Toronto could throw a convincing punch. However, it's probably best if the Leafs can avoid this nightmare matchup altogether.

Tampa Bay Lightning

This season's head-to-head:

Last playoff meeting: 2023, Maple Leafs won first-round series in Game 6.

This meeting is a long shot, as Toronto and Tampa Bay currently have the best chances of winning the division, but let's talk about it anyway.

Before Wednesday's game, the Maple Leafs hadn't faced the Lightning when they were truly groovin'. The Bolts entered that contest tied for the third-highest points percentage (.722) with an 18-6-3 record since Feb. 1. Art Ross Trophy favorite Nikita Kucherov was even more insane than usual over that stretch with 40 points in his last 25 games. Star goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy had also reached a new level with a league-leading 16 wins and .930 save percentage in his last 22 appearances. Toronto ended up sweeping the season series after clutching out the finale in overtime, but it was a hard-fought battle, with Tampa Bay rallying to secure a point.

Toronto can also hang its hat on having beaten the Lightning in 2023 for its first playoff series win since 2004, but these Bolts are better than they were last season and the year before. They're only one point off their season total from the last two campaigns with four games left to play, and their staggering plus-73 goal differential blows their previous totals out of the water. To the Leafs' credit, they're playing with a better defensive structure under Berube, but the Bolts rank second in the league in goals per game (3.55), and they're bringing plenty of momentum into the spring.

Clearly, there isn't going to be an easy road to Round 2, and the Leafs will need their big guns to step up if they have any hope of advancing.