It's hard being a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, given the team's repeated failures in the Stanley Cup playoffs, just like Sunday's 6-1 loss to the Florida Panthers in Game 7 of a second-round series.

But it's also difficult to be a player for Toronto because of the bright lights and the intense pressure that comes with wearing Maple Leafs colors.

Panthers head coach Paul Maurice, who steered his team to a 6-1 Game 7 victory over Toronto on Sunday night, showed he was very much aware of that, as he tried to offer perspective in defense of his former team.

“What's great for the league is hard for the Toronto Maple Leafs and their players,” said Maurice during the postgame press conference (h/t Luke Fox of Sportsnet).

“The passion for the Toronto Maple, the scrutiny these men are under is why everybody else gets paid so much,” continued Maurice, who coached Toronto from 2006 to 2008.

“It's a driver. There's a cost to it- for them. There's a challenge. Yeah, you can hit one out of the park here, and then you're never buying lunch for the rest of your life, right? But there's a cost for these guys, for their families. When you lose a game like this, it's going to be rough on them. You go through a whole bunch of things that aren't wrong, but they're wrong because they lost.”

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The 58-year-old Maurice also called the Maple Leafs a “good team” and described the current group as a “much better team than we played two years ago.”

“This team is in that group of teams – like ours — where there's 11 this year. Then there's eight. They have a chance. That's one of those teams. So, you're going to assign a whole bunch of character flaws just aren't true.”

At the end of the day, Maurice's Panthers were better than Toronto in the just-concluded series. Despite dropping the first two games, Florida found the strength to turn things around and win the series. From Game 3 to Game 7, the Panthers posted a 105.6 5-on-5 PDO while outscoring the Maple Leafs, 19-8.

Up next for the Panthers is a Western Conference Final date with the Carolina Hurricanes.