NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A decade has passed since the Toronto Maple Leafs missed the playoffs, their nine-year streak the longest going in the NHL.
The Florida Panthers are back-to-back Stanley Cup champions who have made three consecutive trips to the final while qualifying in each of the past six seasons.
Unless something shockingly rare happens, neither one of the Eastern Conference mainstays will make it this spring, with lofty expectations derailed
by major absences.
Toronto has seemingly never recovered from Mitch Marner not returning as a free agent and doing a sign-and-trade with Vegas to salvage some value for the perennial point-a-game-plus producer. Florida has been ravaged by injuries, no one more significant than captain Aleksander Barkov's torn right ACL that has sidelined the do-it-all first-line center since training camp.
“The burden hasn’t gotten heavier,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “We’ve just had fewer men to shoulder it.”
With a quarter of the schedule left to go, players on either side are quick to point out there is a lot of hockey left. But the trade deadline is Friday, and each of these teams is expected to be a seller.
That is incredibly unfamiliar territory for a couple of contenders used to their general managers buying this time of year. Instead, players are skating on eggshells wondering what's coming next.
“I don’t go sit around and talk to every guy (about) what they’re thinking, but they’re obviously thinking about it — it’s natural," Leafs coach Craig Berube said. “The deadline’s around the corner here and there’s a lot of talk and noise, but you’ve got to block it out.”
Also being blocked out is how much of a herculean effort it would take to make up ground. Only eight teams in each conference get in. Toronto is sitting 13th and Florida 14th out of 16.
“This is a daunting task,” said Panthers winger Matthew Tkachuk, who missed the first 47 games after surgery to repair a sports hernia and a torn adductor muscle and didn't debut until Jan. 19. “We all know it. I mean, we know the points that we have to get in with. Ultimately, it’s probably going to be higher than the normal in the East. And there’s a lot of teams ahead of us.”
Columbus, Washington, Ottawa and Philadelphia are all ahead in the standings and also on the outside looking in. Toronto is nine points back of the second and final wild-card spot with 21 games to play and Florida 10 back.
Panthers forward Tomas Nosek, who on Tuesday night played his first game since the Cup final last June after undergoing offseason knee surgery, said he and his teammates “cannot look at the math. When you start looking at the math, you’re gone.”
The Maple Leafs, who have not had long postseason runs like the Panthers but also have made the playoffs every year since Auston Matthews broke into the league, are not yet ready to publicly discuss what blew this season horribly off course.
“You can look at a lot of different factors,” Matthews said. “I’m not going to sit here and speculate on what went wrong.”
It's more complicated than just missing Marner, though the collection of forwards GM Brad Treliving acquired to fill the void have not come close to doing so. Toronto has given up more goals than last season, scored slightly fewer and Berube has challenged players to bring more to the table.
“You’ve got to keep fighting and grinding,” Berube said. “You’ve got to have pride every night, every shift.”
The Panthers showed over the past few years since Maurice took over and Tkachuk joined in a trade from Calgary that they have plenty of pride and never lack work ethic or effort. But the missing pieces on a nightly basis, including Seth Jones' broken collarbone from the Winter Classic on Jan. 2 that knocked him out of going to the Olympics, have taken a toll.
“We’re at six or seven guys on average out every single night, and that’s a lot,” Maurice said. “What I love about them is that they keep trying and they keep trying.”
Trying to make up for losing a heart-and-soul player and leader such as Barkov has seemingly put Florida's fuel tank on empty. Much of the roster has played dozens upon dozens of extra games from the long playoff runs, and the fatigue factor is showing, even if players are not ready to surrender the season.
“We know what the situation is,” said Anton Lundell, who was tasked with taking Barkov's spot. “I think right now we just look one game at a time and not too much further ahead or behind. We just try to stay in the moment. Obviously, we’re going to fight till the end and we’re going to give everything we can and fight together.”
Oliver Ekman-Larsson hoisted the Stanley Cup in 2024 as part of a stint with the Panthers that revitalized his career. Now with the Maple Leafs — and maybe not for long given his trade value — the 34-year-old defenseman has made the playoffs just four times in 15 years and understands all too well how to handle when the downs outweigh the ups in the NHL.
“You’re searching for answers,” Ekman-Larsson said. "You’re searching for things that you can do better. That’s every day. It doesn’t really (just start) around the trade deadline or whatever. You’re always trying to get better in different ways. I don’t think it’s the right time to stand here and point fingers.”
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