Toronto Maple Leafs players are catching strays from players still in NHL playoffs

Even when they’re out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Toronto Maple Leafs still seem to be catching a few strays from players around the league.

As has been the case in every season since 2002, the Maple Leafs failed to make it out of the second round of the playoffs, losing a heartbreaking Game 7 to the Florida Panthers earlier this week.

But while Maple Leafs fans have still been commiserating over the loss, the organization has gone and parted ways with Brendan Shanahan, and there are a million questions to be said about the team’s future, the Panthers themselves have just continued their winning ways.

Now two games deep into the Eastern Conference Final, the Panthers have taken a 2-0 lead over the Carolina Hurricanes, outscoring their opponents by a 10-2 margin over the contests.

Though they’ve still got two more games to win to accomplish the feat, Florida looks well on their way to a third straight Stanley Cup Final, a sentence that would’ve been unfathomable for much of the franchise’s history.

But at least one player on Carolina doesn’t seem all that impressed with the Panthers, and he’s using their previous series against the Leafs going the distance as potential motivation for their vulnerability.

Carolina forward Taylor Hall, who spent much of his youth in Ontario and has often trained in Toronto during the summer, picked the Leafs as easy fodder when speaking to the media after Thursday night’s 5-0 loss.

“I mean, they just went seven games against the Leafs, right? They’re not a perfect hockey team and we know that there are areas to exploit, like any team,” Hall said about the Panthers, per ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski.

The Panthers and Hurricanes head into Game 3 tomorrow night in Sunrise, Florida, with puck drop for the contest set for 5 p.m. PDT/8 p.m. EDT.

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