There’s a natural tendency to be guarded when Florida Panthers forward Brad Marchand praises the Toronto Maple Leafs, so perhaps you should read his latest proclamation at your own peril.

Marchand and the Panthers hold a 3-2 series lead entering Friday’s Game 6, after delivering a crushing blow in Wednesday’s 6-1 victory. The 36-year-old is well-acquainted as one of the defining antagonists from this decade of Maple Leafs hockey, and warned against counting them out while on the brink of elimination.

“If anything it’s going to make them hungrier to have a bounce-back game and prove a lot of people wrong, which is a very dangerous combination,” Marchand said Friday following the Panthers’ morning skate via The Athletic’s Chris Johnston.

This sentiment will surely be met with skepticism from parts of the fan base, and the larger hockey collective, after the Panthers authoritatively took over the series in Game 5, but Marchand is still correct. The entire Core Four era will be up for examination this weekend if the Leafs are eliminated, an attendant component of being in win-now mode.

Marchand was an integral part of four different Boston Bruins teams that eliminated the Maple Leafs in seven games during the 2013, 2018, 2019 and 2024 playoffs, respectively. He’s found a new role on the Panthers on the team’s third line with Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen, an elite defensive group that provide secondary scoring punch on a moment’s notice. Marchand scored the overtime winner in Game 3 for the Panthers, which has arguably been the turning point of the series.

“ We’ve been a great team all season long,” Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews said following Game 5. “ There’s always gonna be belief in this group and the confidence in this group from what we built out throughout the year. So we gotta go into this game with confidence and it’s gotta be our best game of the year.”

Matthews, Mitch Marner and the Maple Leafs’ core group will be exceptionally motivated to change the narrative and save their season and Marchand is indeed correct, even if people don’t want to hear it from this particular messenger.