Breaking down series in Eastern Conference 2nd Round

The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs that is written by former coaches and assistants, who will turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher. Phil Housley and Mark Recchi will take turns providing insight.

In this edition, Recchi, a three-time Stanley Cup champion, Hall of Fame forward, and former assistant for the Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils, breaks down the Eastern Conference Second Round.

The Florida Panthers went into playoff mode long before the actual postseason began, and that level of play has carried over.

They're getting great goaltending out of Sergei Bobrovsky, who is rested after not playing much in the final month of the regular season. They're playing hard, physical, as a team, and they just look together. They came together at the end of the regular season, and it's showing.

Think about it, the Panthers' playoff fate was basically in the hands of the Penguins, and now look at them, with a chance to advance to the Eastern Conference Final for the first time since 1996 with a win against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 4 at FLA Live Arena on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; ESPN, CBC, SN, TVAS).

Florida got in and has taken full advantage of it.

I recently heard a comparison of the Panthers to the Los Angeles Kings in 2012, when they were the last team to qualify for the playoffs before going on to win the Stanley Cup. I buy it.

They're very similar teams. They're bigger teams, stronger, fast. They play physical. The Kings were a big, strong team that could skate with you and really play any type of game. The Panthers are that way, too.

They've been simply relentless against the Maple Leafs. They aren't giving them any room at all. They're in faces, on top of the puck, and they're playing with so much confidence. You can really see that everybody has bought in. They found a groove and ran with it. It's impressive to watch.

Now, it helps when nobody wants to put a body on Sam Reinhart in overtime, allowing the Panthers forward to score the goal that gave them a 3-0 lead in the series on Sunday.

With that being said, I'll also say that Reinhart is such an underrated player, and he's had a great playoffs so far, scoring five goals in 10 games. Still, the Maple Leafs needed to get a body on him to prevent him from scoring that goal.

That's in the past, though. If I was a coach with the Maple Leafs, or a player on the team, the conversation I'd be having right now would go like this:

"If we win one game, all of a sudden the pressure is on Florida."

That might sound strange, especially in Toronto, where the pressure is always on the Maple Leafs, but they're not expected to win now. They're not expected to comeback from down 3-0, so doesn't that mean the pressure is off them going into Game 4?

Win Game 4, go home and give yourself a chance. That's it. Every game Toronto wins from this point on just puts that much more pressure on Florida.

That's what we felt when I was with the Boston Bruins in 2010, when we became the third team in NHL history to blow a 3-0 lead in a best-of-7 series. We lost Game 4 to the Philadelphia Flyers in overtime, and it started to get away from us. The pressure mounted. We couldn't get it back. Then, after leading 3-0 in Game 7, we allowed the next four goals to lose the series.

If the Maple Leafs can win Game 4, the expectations for their ability to comeback in the series won't change, but the Panthers will start to think: "We better finish this. We can't let it get to Game 6."

The Maple Leafs can play freer now with zero expectations on them, but they have to get their top guys going.

Auston Matthews, Mitchell Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares have combined for just four assists in the series. They're pressing. When you don't have a lot of success, you try to do too much instead of playing your game. It's not for lack of effort or will. It's the opposite, really.

Those four forwards need to just play their game. They don't have to be anything more than who they are. They have to be themselves, play within themselves. If they don't, that's when things tend to fall apart, as they have in the first three games against Florida.

I'm not sure they were ready for the pressure that the Panthers have brought. You'd think after Game 1 you'd get the gist of it, that these guys are ready and they need to be, too. But Florida keeps plugging along, and now Toronto has to have some type of response.

In the other series in the Eastern Second Round, the New Jersey Devils had a big response in Game 3 on Sunday, defeating the Carolina Hurricanes 8-4 at Prudential Center after losing Games 1 and 2 in Raleigh, North Carolina, by a combined score of 11-2.

I worked with Jack Hughes as an assistant with the Devils, and his maturation is on display in this series.

He wasn't producing in Games 1 and 2. It just didn't happen for him. But he was playing the right way. He never stopped playing the right way. That's maturity. And then he goes into Game 3 and takes it over with two goals and two assists.

He elevates, and he's so competitive. To watch him in Game 3 was fun for me. Everything went for him. He was on top of it all game.

Devils coach Lindy Ruff did a great job with the matchups on home ice to get Hughes away from Hurricanes center Jordan Staal in particular and their top defensemen, too. Hughes took advantage of it. That's what great players do.

Carolina has to have a big response now, but New Jersey just seems to get on this run where it says, 'OK, now we're going. Here we go.' It just looked like the Devils played their game in Game 3. They know they have to play fast. Get it, move it, skate and forecheck hard.

The Hurricanes did not see that as much in the first two games, but they should have expected it in New Jersey. They'll be ready for it in Game 4 on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; ESPN, CBC, SN, TVAS), but can they contain it?

It's an interesting formula to get blown out in Games 1 and 2 before figuring a series out. But the Devils did it against the New York Rangers in the first round, and now they're trying to do it again against the Hurricanes. That's a tough road to travel, but hey, whatever works.