Temperature rising in Leafs-Panthers series as Domi avoids suspension

Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube held a media availability at the team hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. on Monday. Panthers coach Paul Maurice met with the media at the Baptist Health Iceplex. 
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In the final seconds of Florida’s 2-0 win in Game 4, Leafs forward Max Domi hit Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov into the boards from behind.

"The league looks at those things very closely," Panthers coach Paul Maurice noted on Sunday night, "especially at that point in the game.”

Leafs coach Craig Berube shrugged when asked about the play on Monday as his team prepared to fly home to Toronto.

“Whatever,” he said. “That’s the league's stuff. I haven't heard anything, so I don't know. I doubt it.”

The NHL later announced it was fining Domi $5,000, the maximum allowable under the collective bargaining agreement, for boarding.

Berube used the question about the Domi hit to shift the focus.

“To me, the [Dmitry] Kulikov hit on [Mitch] Marner was 10 times worse,” he said.

The Panthers defenceman elbowed the Leafs winger in the head after Marner passed a puck in the second period. There was no call on the play.

Maurice had no interest in getting into a war of words with his counterpart on Monday as the Panthers gathered at their practice facility.

“I don’t care,” Florida's coach responded when asked about Berube’s comment. “Everybody has an opinion. Mine right now is it’s the day after a game, but two days away from our next, and I don’t really have anything for you. Yeah, fine.”

Fair enough. But with the series now even at two games a piece, the temperature is clearly rising on the ice.

“It's normal,” Berube said. “We expected it and I think we're fine with it. We're handling it, we're physical. I thought we were the more physical team last night.”

The Panthers lead the playoffs in hits per 60 minutes, but the Leafs held a 47-40 edge in that category on Sunday. Notably, defenceman Simon Benoit levelled winger Sam Reinhart with a big check during a Panthers power play.

Leafs defenceman Oliver Ekman-Larsson was later assessed an interference penalty for hitting Evan Rodrigues when he didn't have the puck. That knocked the Panthers winger out of the game. He was still being evaluated on Monday.

"He's not ruled out, not cleared to play," said Maurice.

What did Maurice think of the physicality in Game 4?

“Game 2 in the Tampa series was nasty,” he said, referencing his team's first round series against Tampa Bay. “I didn’t leave the bench last night feeling that was exceptionally physical or under physical on our part. It wasn’t a piece of a game that I was processing.”

Instead, Maurice highlighted that the Panthers seemed to look more like themselves on Sunday. After allowing 13 goals in the first three games of the series, Florida was finally able to lock things down defensively.

Now, it will be up to Toronto to respond in Game 5 back home on Wednesday.

“The group understands it's going to be a tough series,” Berube said. “We knew that going in. It's going to be a long series. We lose two here, but we lost two in a row against Ottawa and came out in Game 6 and got it done. We gotta reset. We'll be fine.”

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After the Domi hit on Barkov, Panthers winger Matthew Tkachuk leaned over the Panthers bench and started getting in the ear of William Nylander, who was at the end of the Leafs bench.

"Yeah, just talk,” Nylander said. “I mean, that's what he does.”

Tkachuk seemed to be telling Nylander he would be targeted because of what Domi did to Barkov. 

"He'll probably do whatever he can do to get a player off their game,” Nylander said with a smile. “But, yeah, next game's going to be a fun one.”

You can understand why the Panthers are looking to unsettle Nylander. He is leading the Leafs with three goals and six points in the series.

But Nylander was held in check on Sunday along with the rest of the Leafs.

“I think they did a good job keeping us on the outside,” Nylander said. "Yeah, they did a great job. It's a tough battle."

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The temperature is rising in the series and the heat is certainly on Toronto's top-line centre Auston Matthews, who has yet to score through four games against the Panthers.

“Well, he’s just gotta keep playing,” said Berube. “He does a lot of other things in the game that really dictate things, and does a great job with a lot of other areas of the game. He's just got to keep focusing on that. He's going to get his looks and just stick with what he's doing and don't get too frustrated with anything because it's not just about scoring goals. He's got a lot of other stuff he does extremely well for us. And big goal's coming. That's the way you've got to think about it, and who knows when it's going to happen, but just focus on playing the game."

Matthews, who scored a career low 33 goals in 67 games in the regular season, admitted to feeling “a little bit” snakebitten right now. He has fired 14 shots on net in the series.

“The chances have been there,” Matthews said. “I think I've just got to do a better job of bearing down on some of them. But I think for the most part, throughout the four games, we've been winning shifts, generating chances against tough matchups. But, obviously, if you want to score, I want to score. But continue to get these opportunities and just capitalize and go from there."

Matthews scored two goals in six games against the Ottawa Senators in the first round with one of the goals coming at even strength.

Matthews was held without a goal during Toronto's five-game loss to Florida in the 2023 playoffs. He has scored just three goals in his last 20 playoff games.

Matthews missed 15 games in the regular season due to an upper body injury. He also missed a game at the 4 Nations Faceoff. He played every game down the stretch with the Leafs, but questions about his health have popped up again because he missed a practice during the first round of the playoffs and was the only player to sit out the morning skate on Sunday.

As Berube has noted repeatedly, Matthews continues to influence the game positively despite the lack of goals. He’s piled up eight assists and is winning 57.4 per cent of his faceoffs in the playoffs

“He's out there killing penalties,” said Berube. “He's going against top lines. He's checking. He’s working. He’s competing. A lot of good stuff, you know. Yeah, we’d like him to score and so would he. It's not easy to score in a playoffs, you know. So, I'm not overly worried about it.”

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It would help Matthews if Marner started getting more pucks to the net. The 102-point winger failed to land even a single shot on net during the two games in Florida.

“Sometimes your top guys, they look to get too good of a chance instead of just putting a puck on net,” Berube noted. “And I think there's times where we could put more pucks on net at angles, bad angles, just firing it in there with people going to the net. You never know, it goes off somebody, rebounds or anything like that. So I think Mitch could just be a little bit more direct in that area.”

Marner scored his only goal of the series on a quick shot from the side boards in the third period in Game 2. That was his only shot in the last three games.

“He has the puck a lot, we know that, and he's got to look to put more pucks on net,” Berube said. “And I get what he's trying to do. Like, he wants to upgrade his chance. He's a passer first. We know that, but we need him to shoot pucks too.”

Marner was requested for an interview after Sunday’s game, but was not made available.

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Even if the offence is stalling at 5-on-5, Marner and Matthews should be able to produce on the power play. But Toronto failed to breakthrough on three attempts in Game 4.

“Execution was a little off,” said Berube. “I thought the first one was pretty good, but after that, like, we won the faceoff, but it wasn't totally clean, and we couldn't get out of their pressure on it. And they shot it down the ice, and then we didn't enter the zone very well last night with the puck on our entries. They came hard with the pressure, and I didn't think that we executed well enough against the pressure like we did the game before."

Toronto's top unit scored its first goal of the series in Game 3. The Leafs have cashed on only two of 15 power-play chances in the four games. 

The Panthers converted on one of their six power plays on Sunday.

“They get four power plays in the first period and they end up capitalizing on one at the end,” said Berube. “We get three power plays in the second period and we don't capitalize. We score and it's a 1-1 game now. I mean, it's close. It's right there, you know.”

Florida is 3/14 on the power play in the series.

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Joseph Woll turned aside 35 of 37 shots to keep Toronto within striking distance for most of Sunday’s game.

“Joe was awesome,” said defenceman Brandon Carlo. “Having a guy like that behind you, especially as a defensive guy like myself, very thankful for that. He held us in there all the way through to the end."

It was an important bounce-back effort from Woll, who allowed five goals during a leaky performance in Friday’s Game 3 loss.

“He was excellent in the game,” said Berube. “I thought he was really aggressive, made some big saves when we needed him to make them and just looked comfortable in net for me. Throughout the season, he's been a real steady goalie for us and done a good job, in my opinion, most nights. And almost all nights, he’s given us a chance to win the game and he did last night. He did a great job for us.”

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Leafs lines in Game 4: 

Knies - Matthews - Marner
Pacioretty - Tavares - Nylander
Lorentz - Laughton - Jarnkrok
McMann - Domi - Holmberg

McCabe - Tanev
Rielly - Carlo
Benoit - Ekman-Larsson

Woll starts
Murray