The Toronto Maple Leafs will be playing second round hockey in 2024-25. It’s not often you can say that about this team, but after coming out of the new era Battle of Ontario victorious, the Leafs are set to face the Florida Panthers in what’s sure to be a bloodbath of a playoff series.

The Panthers won the Stanley Cup last season, and they’ve got a well-established reputation for being tough and painful to play against. Between guys like Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett on the physical side, or Aleksander Barkov and Anton Lundell on the shutdown side, the Leafs will have their work cut out for them regardless of who’s jumping over the board for the Cats.

Head coach Craig Berube says that his team is ready for the war, and that while they’re happy to have advanced, they understand that the work is far from over.

“It’s one round, and you should be happy you won that round, but not satisfied, and you shouldn’t get complacent,” Berube said, at first struggling to remember the word he was after. “First rounds are tough, and to me, it only gets tougher, in my experience.”

Berube is familiar with Panthers head coach Paul Maurice, with the two bench bosses having faced off in the playoffs in the past. The former was on the St. Louis Blues’ bench while the latter coached the Winnipeg Jets, and Berube said that regardless of the team, he knows that Maurice will have his players playing the same physical, in-your-face brand of hockey that the Panthers are known for.

“In Winnipeg, we played them in a playoff series, and his [Maurice’s] teams are very aggressive and physical, and they play that game,” Berube said. “They’re coming at you all the time. There’s no sitting back against them, they go one way. They’re coming at you, there’s not gonna be a lot of room out there, and that’s the way this team has played. Even in Winnipeg, I thought his team was similar.”

Having already eliminated his younger brother, Matthew Tkachuk is a name that will be on the Leafs’ radar for the next two weeks. He brings the same snot to his game as Brady, but can chip in more offensively than the younger Tkachuk, and Berube knows that he’ll be a handful for the Leafs in this series.

“He’s a very intelligent player, very good around the net. He’s made his living there. He can pass, he can score, he can do a lot of things. He’s a very good player.”

The common theme in speaking to Berube and Leafs players ahead of this series is the awareness that Florida is going to be an extremely tough out, which shouldn’t come as a surprise at this point, but it’s worth remembering.

“Well, anytime you’re playing the Stanley Cup Champions, you’re gonna be the underdog, right?” Berube continued. “They’ve proven they’re a great team over the past few years, and you know, they are a really good team. We’re a good team too. Like I said, we’re approaching this business-like, we gotta ago out and do our job and play the way we can.”