TORONTO — Sheldon Keefe knew that Matthew Tkachuk was going to be trouble for his team.
A huge challenge at the very least.
The Leafs coach had a lot to say about Tkachuk before Game 1.
“There’s a lot to handle there in terms of how he plays. And when I say ‘how he plays,’ I mean he’s so dynamic in that he can hurt you on the rush; he can make a play; he can score a goal; he’s gonna drive the net; he’s gonna be around the crease. He’s as good as any player in the NHL behind the goal line and in along the back wall. So there’s a lot to handle there.”
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Keefe wasn’t done.
“And there’s obviously the emotion and energy he brings to the game,” he continued on the Panthers’ best player. “So for us, it’ll be to try to neutralize him as much as we can in terms of his abilities to play with the puck and play on offence, and how he really drives their team. But also not get distracted as he would like us to be with any of the other stuff outside the game play.”
Round 1 went to Tkachuk — definitively.
Tkachuk played almost 21 minutes. He netted three assists. He drew two penalties (one of them negated by a goal, the other a phantom hook on Mark Giordano). He threw a game-high nine hits.
Shot attempts were — wait for it — 26-8 at five-on-five when he was on the ice. Florida won over 70 percent of the expected goals.
Mouth guard hanging out of his mouth all night, Tkachuk was a problem. A big problem. Which shouldn’t be all that surprising.
Tkachuk just ran all over the best team in the NHL in the first round. He scored five goals in that come-from-behind series win over the record-setting Bruins, including the game-tying goal in a wild Game 6 win. He also notched six assists. Tkachuk buried 40 goals for the second straight season and tied for sixth in league scoring. He powered the Panthers to the playoffs, which might well earn him a nomination for the Hart Trophy. (I had him second on my ballot, behind you-know-who.)
The only two players with more points than Tkachuk (213) in the past two regular seasons: Connor McDavid (aka you-know-who) and Leon Draisaitl.
Keefe obviously wasn’t surprised.
The question now is whether he and the Leafs can find a way to hold Tkachuk down. Not to mention the Panthers as a whole. Florida scored even more than the Leafs during the regular season. Game 1 was played on their often wild terms.
“Their pace is high,” Keefe said after the 4-2 loss. “I would say it’s a quicker pace out there (than Tampa) and they’ve got a lot of skill that executes at a high rate of speed.”
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Beginning with that menacing threesome of Tkachuk, Sam Bennett and Nick Cousins.
The Leafs coach went into the game planning to match John Tavares, Calle Järnkrok and Selke Trophy nominee Mitch Marner against that group. Two strong defensive wingers surrounding his captain. That plan was quickly squashed. The Tkachuk-led unit buried Tavares and company in the Toronto zone in the opening period and punched in the first goal moments after Tkachuk walked around Marner and fired.
Cousins beat Jake McCabe and Järnkrok to the rebound.
Let's do it again, ok? pic.twitter.com/fESmSi2rdy
— Florida Panthers (@FlaPanthers) May 3, 2023
After 20 minutes, shot attempts were 10-2 for the Panthers when Tkachuk’s crew was out there.
Keefe changed his plan. He sent Marner to play alongside Auston Matthews and used those guys along with groups led by David Kämpf and Ryan O’Reilly to counter Tkachuk. He kept Tavares, playing the rest of the way with Järnkrok and William Nylander, away from them.
“I thought we did a lot better once we made the changes to our lines,” Keefe said.
Tkachuk’s crew didn’t tilt the ice quite as much over the final two periods. Tkachuk especially didn’t seem to have the puck as much. (Matthews, Marner and Matthew Knies did a better job of controlling it.) But his line still put a dent in the game.
An apparent miscommunication between Morgan Rielly and (the rising) Knies led to Tkachuk winning the race for a loose puck in the Leaf zone in the middle frame. He sent the puck to the point, where Aaron Ekblad loaded up for a shot that was tipped by Bennett, who got inside position on Rielly.
“They do a really good job below that crease, below that goal line, and make plays out of it,” Marner said. “They crash the net pretty hard and get those second opportunities. So we gotta do a better job of making it harder to get out of the goal line, making it not so easy.”
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Tkachuk iced the game when — after he drew a penalty on McCabe — the Panthers scored their fourth goal. It was Tkachuk who teed up the Brandon Montour blast.
“With Bennett and Tkachuk in particular,” Keefe said before the game, it was “their skill set” that threatened “and the fact that both guys are great competitors and they’re relentless; they don’t give you a second to rest or relax.”
“It’s gonna be a real challenge for us to manage those guys,” he added. “And that’s to say nothing of the others they have — (Aleksander) Barkov and (Carter) Verhaeghe’s as dangerous a guy as there is in the league coming off the rush.”
Keefe was right again.
It was Verhaeghe who slipped behind the Leafs D — with McCabe caught on a pinch and T.J. Brodie misfiring on a puck in the neutral zone — and gave the Panthers a lead they would not relinquish after Michael Bunting tied the game.
“We cannot make that mistake if it’s 2-2,” Keefe said.
another late-period goal pic.twitter.com/LioQ4D7qln
— Omar (@TicTacTOmar) May 3, 2023
Verhaeghe, the former Leafs draft pick, scored 42 goals during the regular season, tied for ninth most in the league.
The Panthers play him alongside Barkov and Anthony Duclair.
Sam Reinhart, who finished with 31 goals himself, plays elsewhere.
Twelve different players scored at least 12 goals for the Panthers during the regular season. In short, a lot of threats from a high-paced, high-powered attack.
The Leafs will need stiffer resistance around their net as this series moves ahead. They did a good job, for the most part, of that against the Lightning in Round 1. A better night from their top two pairs overall feels like a must — McCabe and Brodie along with Rielly and Luke Schenn. It also feels like a sure thing now that Keefe deploys groups led by Matthews, Kämpf and O’Reilly opposite Tkachuk. Maybe Matthews more than anyone, if only to keep the puck out of Tkachuk’s hands.
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Keefe might have to tweak his lineup some when the series moves to Sunrise.
The Game 1 result might have looked different for the Leafs had they managed to convert on one of their power plays. They were all over a Panthers penalty kill that’s had problems all season and was blasted by the Bruins in Round 1.
Sergei Bobrovsky stopped everything he saw though, including two great looks from Matthews, and had the slight edge overall on Ilya Samsonov in goal.
That’s a battle the Leafs can win — need to win.
Priority one though? Stop, err, slow down Tkachuk — somehow.
— Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick
(Top photo: Kevin Sousa / NHLI via Getty Images)
