The attitude era: Maple Leafs send message to fiercest rivals with playoff hockey on horizon

The Leafs appear to be a different team than the one that was run over in the playoffs by the Florida Panthers last spring, writes Nick Kypreos.

Sheldon Keefe should be sending a thank-you letter to the NHL offices in New York.

The league’s scheduling guru, Steve Hatze-Petros, did Keefe’s Maple Leafs a favour last summer when he arranged for Toronto to play Florida twice in their last nine games.

There’s no better way for the Leafs to prepare for the playoffs this season than by playing the pesky Panthers and, despite Florida coach Paul Maurice saying before Monday’s 6-4 Toronto victory that “nobody’s going to remember this game,” it definitely mattered.

“When you play a team that you might play in the playoffs twice in the last 10 games, you want to put your best foot forward.” Leafs enforcer Ryan Reeves said before the game. “Not only that, but you want to send a message.”

The Leafs appear to be a different team than the one that was run over by the Panthers in the second round of the playoffs last spring. They’re bringing a new attitude that indicates they won’t be pushed around and they’re doing it as a collective.

Reaves set the tone Monday. Two minutes into the contest, he hunted down six-foot-five defenceman Miko Mikkola and delivered a thunderous forecheck behind the Panthers net. It was the type of hit Leafs fans have been wanting for years, and it was contagious.

Connor Dewar aggressively shoved Ryan Lomberg after he hit Jake McCabe from behind. Then McCabe and Mark Giordano started another scrum after Matthew Tkachuk took a run into the crease of Ilya Samsonov. The game was barely five minutes in, but the message was clear: We aren’t the Leafs from a year ago.

Later, we watched Matthew Knies confront Mikkola after he hit Pontus Holmberg, who went into the boards awkwardly. “It was necessary for me to step in there,” Knies said. “I just wanted to give him a little payback because I didn’t like the hit.”

Keefe had no issue with Knies’ response even if it led to a penalty.

“You like those kinds of things that happen,” the coach said. “You like it even more when you get the kill coming out of it. Those kinds of things were good.”

Reaves and friends certainly let it be known that, at least physically, these Leafs are prepared to put up a fight. Win or lose it’s been a recurring theme over the last several weeks of this season. On Wednesday night against Tampa Bay, Reaves lay a big hit on Victor Hedman during his first shift before dropping the gloves in the third period to try to fire up his team.

“You saw the big scrum in Buffalo,” Reaves told Sportsnet in Monday’s post-game interview, referring to Saturday night’s 3-0 win over the Sabres when T.J. Brodie was crunched into the boards in the final minute. leading to a melee that ended with all 10 skaters on the ice receiving 10-minute misconducts.

“It just kind of shows from the beginning of the season, where maybe we didn’t have that, to now, where we have all five guys jumping in,” Reaves said. “You start to become a family and that’s what you need coming into the playoffs.”

Say what you will about this team’s defensive warts and the many third periods they’d like to forget — and those are real concerns — but this late regular-season push, headlined by a ton of attitude, is just what the Leafs have needed most.

Their biggest challenge over the past few years has been finding the emotional fire teams need to win in the post-season. They seem to have uncovered that. We saw it when they played hard against Connor McDavid and Edmonton a few weeks ago and when they went out of their way to send a message to Brad Marchand and Boston his Bruins before that.

The way they showed off their new-found physicality against the Panthers, whose best team attribute might be their toughness, was impressive. It’s still to be determined if Maurice’s team is in a bit of a spiral (the Panthers are 2-7-1 in their last 10 games) or if players like Sam Bennett and Tkachuk are just playing possum waiting for the playoff season to begin.

The Leafs may find out when they square off against Florida one more time on April 16 in their second-last game of the season, before potentially meeting them for a playoff rematch days later.

“I thought Reavo really set the tone for us and did his job,” Keefe said Monday.

That job was to give this team some toughness, some “snot” and a little more of the swagger they’ve lacked in previous years. It was on full display in the second period when Reaves waved his hands at Tkachuk after a scrum in a sarcastic “oh, I’m so scared” manner.

These Leafs have a new attitude. They may not be scared of anyone.

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