Florida Panthers sloppy early, then rally falls flat in Game 1 loss to Maple Leafs
The tone was set from the opening shift.
The Toronto Maple Leafs’ Max Pacioretty won a board battle behind the Florida Panthers’ net and flicked the puck around to William Nylander as he glided down the right board. Nylander drove into the right circle and, aided by a timely screen from John Tavares, fired a wide-angled shot that got past Sergei Bobrovsky to open scoring just 33 seconds into regulation.
“The first goal gave them a little boost,” Panthers forward Eetu Luostarinen said.
A sloppy first period ensued for the Panthers, who dropped Game 1 of their best-of-7 Stanley Cup playoffs second-round series to the Maple Leafs 5-4 on Monday at Scotiabank Arena despite a third-period comeback bid.
Luostarinen and Uvis Balinskis each scored in the opening 4:30 of the third period against Joseph Woll, who replaced starting goaltender Anthony Stolarz midway through the second period, to get Florida within a goal. Florida then killed off a pair of penalties — the Panthers held the Maple Leafs off the board on all five of their power plays Monday — to keep within striking distance.
But Matthew Knies all but iced the game with six minutes left when he scored on a breakaway.
Sam Bennett scored with 1:55 left to cut the deficit back to one but Florida couldn’t get the equalizer.
Game 2 of the series is at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
“Obviously it wasn’t great start by us,” Panthers top-line center and captain Aleksander Barkov said. “We knew they were going to come hard and strong, so it wasn’t great start by us, but we got we got a little better once the game went on. ... We’ll learn from this game.”
Florida looked disjointed all throughout the opening 20 minutes. Sloppy puck possession led to limited scoring chances for the Panthers and turnovers the Maple Leafs capitalized on.
Nylander scored twice in the opening 13 minutes, his second goal coming off an Oliver Ekman-Larsson rebound, and assisted on a third by Morgan Rielly, who beat Bobrovsky on a two-on-one rush 19 seconds after Seth Jones scored for the Panthers on the power play, to take a 3-1 lead after one period.
Chris Tanev added to the Maple Leafs’ lead with a goal on a shot from the point 7:50 into the second period before Florida tried to put together a late rally.
“It was the perfect storm of that’s not the way you want to start when everybody’s got lots of energy and jump but there’s some tension to it always at the start,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “That was the first period. We didn’t look like ourselves, and then got right at the second and after that had a pretty good push to the third.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2025 at 10:46 PM.
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