The Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers would each have given anything to win when they met in Game 7 last spring with a berth in the Eastern Conference Final on the line.
On Saturday, they’ll play again at Scotiabank Arena with the only real victory to be found in a loss.
It’s a peculiar scenario rooted in an NHL season turned upside down. All the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions (Florida) and owners of the league’s longest playoff streak (Toronto) are left competing for entering the final week of the regular season are better odds in the draft lottery.
Entering Game 80, the Leafs and Panthers have identical .494 points percentages — part of a three-way tie with the Seattle Kraken for fifth worst in the overall standings. It’s likely that the winner of Saturday’s game will end up in a worse position than the loser entering the May 5 draft lottery.
The stakes are particularly high for Toronto, which gets to keep its first-round pick this June only in the event it lands inside the top five. Otherwise, it’s earmarked for the Boston Bruins to complete the Brandon Carlo trade.
Securing a top draft choice is an appealing outcome because it would represent a small consolation at the end of a season gone unexpectedly awry for the Leafs. It would also boost the organization’s chances of making good on a desire to quickly return to a competitive window, bringing a quality young asset into the fold who could join the existing team or be flipped in a trade.
While the Leafs themselves have shown absolutely no inclination to manipulate results to make it happen — they continued to dress a veteran-heavy lineup after being officially eliminated from playoff contention and called up a cadre of youngsters from the American Hockey League this week only when injuries necessitated — the best path forward, statistically speaking, is undeniable.
Lose.
And then lose again.
If they climb from their current position in the standings by picking up points over the remaining three games, the only avenue to a top-five pick is by winning the lottery for either the No. 1 or No. 2 selection in May.
The chances of hitting on one of those would likely fall somewhere between 1-in-13 and 1-in-20, depending on their final placing.
Should the Leafs sputter out in the stretch drive and hold their current level in the standings, however, they’d retain a path to a top-five pick simply by having the teams below them win those lottery drawings with much better odds.
That’s the best way to keep their pick from ending up in Boston.
Losing to a Panthers team that bears little resemblance to the one that hammered the Leafs 6-1 in Game 7 last May is almost essential. Lately, the Leafs have been losing to almost everyone, getting outshot 44-16 while getting beat 5-3 on Long Island on Thursday night.
It’s been a similarly tough run for a Florida team knocked off its perch this season by a pervasive run of injuries. The Panthers are currently down eight regulars – Aleksander Barkov, Brad Marchand, Sam Reinhart, Matthew Tkachuk, Anton Lundell, Evan Rodrigues, Aaron Ekblad and Dmitry Kulikov – and they’ve won just three of their last 10 games.
The step-back season has been much more palatable for Florida because the Panthers have made three straight trips to the Stanley Cup Final and already have their entire core locked in long term. An extended summer to heal and rest should bring them right back to contender status, never mind the opportunities the front office will have to make improvements.
That will likely include a high draft pick in June they can put on the trade market, because the Panthers’ 2026 first-round selection was top-10 protected when they traded it to the Chicago Blackhawks for Seth Jones last year.
What happens Saturday will factor into how high that pick ends up landing — on both sides.
Of course, there’s no implication here that any of this will be on the minds of players or coaches when the puck drops.
The NHL is not the NBA, where tanking is part of the daily discussion and multiple teams have been fined for taking anti-competitive measures this season. The NHL appears to have found a sweet spot to discourage the practice by flattening the odds assigned to its worst teams and limiting each franchise to two lottery wins inside a rolling five-year period.
In both actions and words, the Leafs steered well clear of trying to manifest a better long-term outcome once this season got away from them. The truth is they’ve lost 47 of 79 games because they simply weren’t good enough.
“There is zero chance — zero chance — that the Toronto Maple Leafs will tank,” Keith Pelley, MLSE’s CEO and president, said recently. “I don’t believe in it. Ownership doesn’t believe in it. I grew up in an environment when you played sports you tried to win every single game.
“We’ll try to win every single game.”
On Saturday night, however, their fans can be forgiven for quietly hoping they continue to fall short.
