The Toronto Maple Leafs are set to play their biggest game of the season in terms of how the momentum might shift. If they win, they head back to Toronto with a chance to take the second round series against the Florida Panthers and go to the Conference Final for the first time since 2002. If they lose, they have to win a best-of-3 series against a Panthers team that seems to thrive when the odds are stacked against them. The Panthers are well aware of this, which is why it’s never been more imperative that the team sticks to what they’ve been doing.

Even the Maple Leafs’ harshest critics can’t watch what they’ve done in this playoff run without acknowledging that there’s something different about this iteration. They’ve gotten mostly rock-solid play from the net, their defensive corps is a strength for the first time in forever instead of something just to get by with, and with the amount of goals coming from the back end and unlikely candidates like Max Pacioretty, it’s taken some pressure off of the core forwards and allowed them to score some big goals in the series.

The reason for all of this success so far is simple – they’ve taken things day-by-day and they’ve stayed the course.

The one lineup change the Leafs made in this series was the addition of Max Pacioretty to the lineup for Nick Robertson for Game 3, which has proven to be a good one. The veteran has seven points in seven games, including the game-winning goal to clinch a first-round victory for the Leafs and is bringing a more physical presence than Robertson provided, leading the team with 39 and by a margin of seven.

Even the players who aren’t scoring, players like Calle Jarnkrok, Bobby McMann, and Steven Lorentz, are making their mark on the series. Jarnkrok and Lorentz have formed an excellent checking line with Scott Laughton, who has put his body on the line multiple times in the series, and McMann has objectively looked more comfortable with every game that’s passed. Sure, you probably want more than two goals apiece for Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, but you could also make the argument that without their shutdown efforts against the Tim Stutzle line in Round 1 and the Aleksander Barkov line in Round 2, the Leafs wouldn’t still be in the dance right now.

The prospect of the Leafs just being a new coach away from finally figuring it out in the playoffs, especially heading into year 9 of the Matthews era, seemed asinine this time last year. Sure, it was probably obvious at that point that they needed a new voice behind the bench, but was coach number three going to magically re-tool their mental game at the hardest time of year? Maybe it wasn’t as simple as flipping a switch, but it’s impossible to deny the impact that Craig Berube has had on this team in Year 1 of coaching them.

For the longest time, the Leafs were the type of team to outshoot their opponent and do everything but score. Then, when they finally did, they were prone to giving it right back, bonus points if it’s off of a flukey bounce or a terrible shot that the goalie should have had.

That is no longer the case. The Leafs have actually made a point of snatching momentum right back when things swung in the opponent’s favour. You can find multiple examples of this in their playoff run so far, most recently in Game 2 against Florida and most prominently in Game 6 of the first round, when Pacioretty scored the game-winner less than two minutes after Ottawa’s David Perron scored a back-breaker from behind the goal line to tie the game up for the Senators. You can see it in the way they play. No longer, or at least very seldom, do they run around like chickens with their heads cut off as soon as a bounce goes the other way. They aren’t shaken, they just focus on the task at hand – get it back.

Maintaining this mindset against the Panthers is imperative if they want to defeat them in this series. They will do everything in their power, mentally and physically, to get the Leafs off their game and pounce when they have them in the position they want them. They will only get harder to play against the closer they are to being eliminated. And the Leafs can be the team to eliminate them if they just keep rolling with business as usual.