The Toronto Maple Leafs' wound from their Game 7 loss in the second round series of the 2025 NHL Stanley Cup playoffs to the Florida Panthers is still fresh. And the pain? It still stings. Just ask Toronto star forward William Nylander.

“Just a s****y game. That's about it,” Nylander said about the Maple Leafs' most recent in a long list of Game 7 losses (h/t Chris Johnston of The Athletic).

Nylander and the Maple Leafs had a huge start to the Panthers series, as Toronto won the first two games. Their success in that stretch was largely due to a high-flying offense that scored nine total goals.

They were also so close to burying Florida in a 3-0 series hole, but the Panthers battled back from a 3-1 deficit in Game 3 to win the contest via overtime, 5-4. In the four games that followed, the Maple Leafs mustered only four goals while the Panthers produced a total of 14 goals, six coming in their lopsided 6-1 victory in Game 7 in Toronto last Sunday.

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Given the importance of Game 7 and the fact that it was going to be played at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, the Maple Leafs were expected to put up a fight and wake their offense up to get rid of the pesky Panthers. Instead, the opposite happened: Florida took 36 shots alone in the first period, to only 19 by the Maple Leafs. Moreover, Toronto surrendered 75 shot attempts to the Panthers in the first two periods.

The Panthers finally found the back of the net in the second period with Seth Jones burying one off the assists from Evan Rodrigues and Aleksander Barkov. That was the beginning of the end in Game 7 for Toronto, which gave up two more goals before the second period ended. Down 3-1 in the third period, Toronto got some life from a Max Domi goal around two minutes into the final frame, but the Panthers answered right back just less than a minute later with Eetu Luostarinen lighting the lamp.

The Maple Leafs' struggles in Game 7 have been well documented. It's as if they are incapable of winning such a game, as they have now lost all of their seven previous Game 7 outings.

In any case, it's an early offseason again for Nylander and the Maple Leafs, who  went 52-26-4 in the 2024-25 NHL regular season.