The Leafs are onto the second round. While this is was a likely result, it is joyous nevertheless given the history of the Maple Leafs meeting expectations is spotty at best. And while there were legitimate concerns driven from the Senators sweeping the Leafs in the regular season, and Toronto dropping two in a row in the first round, including being shutout at home, most of the TLN prediction makers had Toronto in six (I was the lone optimist predicting five games), and they lived up that, just people didn’t like the path they took to get there.

In what is the most obvious statement that can be made, round two will be harder, but I don’t think the way the first round unfolded changes any confidence levels for better or worse. The same questions need to be answered and going up against the Panthers after they defeated the Lightning in five shows they will be facing a great team at the top of their game, which makes things even tougher than when it was just a great team that is overloaded thanks to the Tkachuk LTIR situation, the team that beat the Leafs in their regular season series, beat the Leafs the last time they made it to the second round, and the team that has been to the Cup Finals in the past two playoffs, including winning it last season. I don’t need to spell out how tough it will be and where it used to be about expectations of advancing in the playoffs, this round is more about hope, but with the expectation that the Leafs should at least show they can hang with the Panthers.

Here are a few more stray thoughts…

Before Game Six, I made the suggestion that Pacioretty, Domi, and Stolarz should be out of the lineup and breaking up the fourth line in favour of stronger top nine made sense. Craig Berube pretty much did none of that and it all worked out swimmingly. I’ll happily eat that.

It does serve to remind me of a couple of important things about why Craig Berube as the coach has a ton of appeal. The first is the Leafs need to win in ways that don’t necessarily jive with how I’d build a hockey team. This isn’t about my tastes, it’s about the desire to see the Leafs win the Stanley Cup in my lifetime and the change in direction to Craig Berube’s style of coaching means that I will often be perplexed but the Leafs be doing something different, which is also what I demanded. I’ll have opinions but I will be happiest when Craig Berube is wrong.

The second thing is Craig Berube has the benefit of being connected to the human element of what is going on with the Leafs that us distant outsiders don’t. Some of this came through in the Max Pacioretty postgame after Game Six, and how it was as him being given time to get back to where he was supposed to be. Again, I don’t agree with it, but Berube presenting Pacioretty with the opportunity to rejoin his former line rather than scold him for underwhelming performances in Game Four and Five absolutely had a favourable impact and meant something to the player. It will be interesting to see if it is something he builds on whether it was the cynical case of being in the right place at the right time on those shifts.

There’s something about Berube saying that this is the Leafs lineup. This is who he’d have in when everyone is healthy and believing in this as his group. If that’s the case, my “change for the sake of change” rock the boat approach was likely never on Berube’s radar.

It will be interesting to see if that confidence carries forward into the second round.

If there is a positive to facing the Panthers instead of the Lightning it might be that style-wise the Panthers are similar to the Senators and won’t require as much of a different approach as the Lightning would. The downside is that the Leafs seem much more capable of handling the Lightning, but we are looking for silver linings here.

A lot of what the Leafs saw from Tkachuk, Batherson, Stutlze, Cozens, Greig, and Cousins will be in an elevated form. There won’t be a shortage of sour pain in the ass players, as somehow the joy of facing Matthew Tkachuk and the joy of facing Brad Marchand has been rolled into a single nightmarish round of hockey, all the while having Barkov and Reinhart being capable of shutting down the Leafs’ top line.

If there is a significant change it might be that the Senators had a better blueline, but the Panthers have a more intimidating blueline. It will remain to be seen whether that helps or hurts the Leafs, as well as the Panthers will be dependent on what version of Sergei Bobrovsky shows up in net. His performance has been consistently good but not great, and he sits at 2.1 goals saved above expected, giving Florida a bit of an advantage over the Leafs as Stolarz sits at 0.1 GSAE.

The Panthers are a tough, smart, defensive team that has the will likely take a physical toll on the Maple Leafs. They are a team that knows the Leafs well and a team that will be showing up with a plan in place for dealing with the Leafs’ top lines. As much as Craig Berube has stated this lineup is the group for the Maple Leafs, playing with different combinations of forwards within that group and determining which defensive units to match to the top lines will be critical.

When I took at the Leafs production against potential playoff opponents a few weeks back, there are a few encouraging takeaways from this list:

Both Marner and Tavares sitting at three points (5 of which are goals) points to both the Leafs top units keeping the Panthers honest. There is also the added bonus of Scott Laughton seemingly playing well against the Panthers which could help Toronto find production outside of the top six, and with Max Pacioretty not having played against Florida at all as a Leaf, he too is a potential wild card in what he could bring to the table, especially if he is in fact the right fit for the Tavares-Nylander line.

Heading into Monday night’s opening game of round two, I’m not sure whether optimism or pessimism are warranted. This is a matchup between two good teams that both have a strong case for moving on and decades of absence from the Conference Finals shouldn’t weigh into our considerations as much as they will. Until the puck is dropped in Game One, why not choose hope?

It’s me. One of the foolish voices that said play Woll in Game Six. I’m still foolish and I’m trying to revisit it.

Stolarz had a very solid first round and the Leafs are absolutely going back to him for Game One against the Panthers, so let’s start with making my take less idiotic off the hop. There is a nice little break for Stolarz as well, so as much I think that fatigue needs to be a consideration with Stolarz at some point, it probably doesn’t factor into Game One or Two against Florida either. It will at some point, but at least at the time I’m writing this, the full schedule for the second round hasn’t been released.

The thing with Woll is that the Leafs don’t need to look at him as a backup and Stolarz shouldn’t take Woll getting work as an indictment of his performance.

Woll is a goaltender who finished up the season with four strong performances. He played more than any Leafs goaltender this season. He still has slightly more playoff experience than Stolarz (although one less Cup ring), and has done well in the playoffs, against Florida, and in the playoffs against Florida. (Woll has a career .940 save percentage against Florida in the regular season, and a .927 save percentage in the playoffs.)

While you can’t blame the Maple Leafs and Craig Berube for trusting Stolarz’s first round results, regular season results, experience with the Panthers, sticking with the goaltender who is winning, and wanting to show trust, I wouldn’t sit on Woll too long as he also has a lot to bring to the Leafs if needed.