The Toronto Maple Leafs will have a fresh look at a new team, albeit a familiar foe in the first round of the 2024-25 Stanley Cup Playoffs. It’s been over 20 years since the last rendition of the Battle of Ontario, but with the Ottawa Senators turning on the jets in the final months of the season, the two teams are set to begin a heated duel for provincial bragging rights and, more importantly, a shot at the Stanley Cup.
The Maple Leafs, on paper, gave themselves the best odds at finally putting together a meaningful playoff run. Although the Senators have had their number in the regular season, they’re objectively the weakest team compared to the two that hail from Florida, and the Leafs will be facing them with a beefed up defensive corps and a much-improved situation between the pipes. All this being said, the Senators will play them as hard if not harder than the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers, so the Leafs can’t take them any lighter than those two teams just because they finished lower in the standings.
Here are three keys to beating the Senators in round 1 of the playoffs.
Stick to your own game
One of the biggest areas the Leafs have fallen victim to in the past is getting wrapped up in their opponent’s style of play and shifting their mindset from playing to their strengths to simply trying to keep up with their opponent while they dictate the play. It always happened against the Boston Bruins and it happened in the second round of the 2022-23 playoffs against the Panthers, too.
The Leafs probably have their best-suited lineup for the playoffs this season in comparison to previous years, but just because they’re a heavier forechecking team and throw the body more, doesn’t mean they can let the Senators dictate the level of physicality. Starting this series on home ice is a golden opportunity for the Leafs to hit the ground running, check the Senators hard and get them gassed early. If they don’t strike first, flush it out of your mind and move on. Auston Matthews has said that the team has been better at simply returning to the basics if they don’t immediately have the time and space to be creative, and holding this strategy close will be imperative to defeating the Sens.
Get the timely save in net
You could use this as a key to success for any team in any playoff series, but it’s especially important for the Leafs in a year where they finally have two reliable goaltenders. Don’t expect the team to alternate between Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll like the Bruins attempted to last season, but regardless of who’s in net, the team needs the timely save more than anything else. Jack Campbell finished the first round against the Montreal Canadiens in 2020-21 with a .934 save percentage, but it didn’t matter when he allowed a weak five-hole goal to Brendan Gallager to open the scoring in Game 7.
Stolarz set career highs all over the board with the Leafs this season, with a record of 21-8-3, a goals-against average of 2.14, and a save percentage of .926, so the Leafs are in good hands assuming he gets the majority of the starts. The 31-year-old hasn’t sold his team many times if at all this season with three shutouts in his last four games. While it would be foolish to expect him to continue his current pace, limiting the Sens offensively and routinely keeping his team within a goal or two of a tie-game will go a long way for this team
Win the matchups battle
The Senators have a pesky, in-your-face top line of Tim Stutzle, Brady Tkachuk, and Claude Giroux. They also have an elite top defensive pairing of Jake Sanderson and Artem Zub. These two units will cause lots of headaches for the Maple Leafs, so the more they can avoid their star players going out against them on o-zone shifts, the better.
With all due respect to Tkachuk, Stutzle, and deadline addition Dylan Cozens, it’s a step down from having to worry about Brayden Point/Nikita Kucherov against Tampa Bay, Aleksander Barkov/Matthew Tkachuk against Florida, or David Pastrnak in Boston. We’ve seen this same Leafs team fall victim to a shutdown masterclass from players like Philippe Danault on the Montreal Canadiens during that playoff series, or Pierre-Luc Dubois and Nick Foligno against the Blue Jackets in the bubble.
The Senators are not to be taken lightly regardless of who’s up front for them, or who they have playing the shutdown game in front of Linus Ullmark, but on paper, the Leafs should win the matchup battle. They just need to show everybody they can do it.
The Leafs and Senators’ series will kick off on Sunday night at 7:00 pm EST.
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