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Five years ago, Maple Leafs fans likely assumed their team by now would have been the cream of the Atlantic Division, supplanting both the Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning. You could certainly make the argument that this year they were as pc28¹ÙÍøclaimed the division for only the third time in the last 25 years.

Few would have seen the Florida Panthers coming and dominating the way they have. But is there anyone out there who would put pc28¹ÙÍøahead of Florida as the best team in the Atlantic considering their back-to-back Stanley Cup final appearances, including last year’s win?

One merely has to compare the clubs’ roster moves over the that time to see why.

Five years ago the Leafs core consisted of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, John Tavares, Zach Hyman and Morgan Rielly. Today, Hyman is gone — joining the Edmonton Oilers as a free agent — but the club added Matthew Knies to the mix while rotating out their goaltenders and nibbling around the roster edges as they navigated some cap hardships.

Florida, over the same period, traded for Sam Bennett, Brandon Montour, Sam Reinhart and Matthew Tkachuk, signed Carter Verhaeghe as a free agent and nabbed Gustav Forsling off waivers — all additions that played significant roles in the Panthers’ recent success.

The Leafs have a chance to make a statement by eliminating the Panthers in the second round as their best-of-seven series kicked off Monday night but there’s no doubt which of them has been the best team in the Atlantic over the last handful of years.

Feather in the caps

Seeing the Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators make the NHL playoffs after lengthy absences — with the Senators even putting a scare into the Maple Leafs in their series, pushing it to six games — was a feel-good moment for those fanbases even if it didn’t go beyond the first round. 

Playoffs, of course, should always be the goal — you can’t win the Stanley Cup if you don’t have a ticket to the dance — but fans of those clubs should also be excited about those teams’ contract and salary-cap situations, too.

The Senators have core forwards Brady Tkachuk ($8.21 million US for the next three seasons) and Tim Stützle ($8.35 million, six more seasons), and blueliners Jake Sanderson ($8.05 million for seven seasons) and Thomas Chabot ($8 million, three more seasons) all locked up at great prices as they enter an off-season that will see the cap rise to $95.5 million — $7.5 million more than it was last season. Ottawa will lose Claude Giroux to unrestricted free agency if they aren’t able to come to an agreement on an extension but will have to play with.

The Canadiens, meanwhile, are stuck with Patrik Laine for one more season at $8.7 million but beyond that they have lined up with their elite young players. Captain Nick Suzuki has five more seasons at $7.875 million, Cole Caufield has six more seasons at $7.85 million while Juraj Slafkovsky begins a new eight-year contract at $7.6 million per season. Likely Calder Trophy winner Cole Hutson has one year left at the entry-level salary of $950,000, roughly the same salary newly signed Russian sensation Ivan Demidov will earn for two more years.

With the NHL has already announced that the cap will rise even higher for 2026-27 ($104 million) and 2027-28 ($113.5 million), those two squads have the potential to be playoff-bound for years to come — if they can spend their money wisely.

When you’re good, you’re bad

It seems the Bruins tend to succeed when they are a motivated bunch.

For 15 or so years they were among the NHL elite in both the regular season and playoffs, making it to three Stanley Cup finals and winning one of them. That all turned this past season and they became late sellers at the NHL trade deadline, shipping out assets that included captain Brad Marchand to the Panthers and Brandon Carlo to the Maple Leafs, as they realized they would finish out of the playoffs.

Still, they managed to succeed at failing down the stretch — the Bruins finished 3-11-2 in their last 16 regular-season games to plummet to where they held the fifth-best NHL draft lottery odds heading into Monday night’s draw.

Another job well done, I guess?

Top marks for Snuggerud 

Often a late playoff boost for teams comes in the way of adding previously drafted players who chose to join the NHL late in the regular season after they finish their NCAA careers.

So far, has probably been the best addition after joining the now ousted Blues from the University of Minnesota. The 20-year-old forward was averaging 17 minutes a night while replacing the injured Dylan Holloway in the top six and contributed two goals and two assists in the series against Winnipeg.

The two most notable additions in recent history remain Chris Kreider, who joined the New York Rangers from Boston College, and Cale Makar, who left UMass-Amherst in 2019 and became an instant hit with the Colorado Avalanche.