Stakes couldn’t be higher in Leafs vs. Lightning

The stakes are almost unimaginable.

It’s the team with the most intense pressure to advance beyond the first round, perhaps ever, versus the red-hot, two-time defending Stanley Cup champions. Whichever way it goes in a stark contrast between angst and swagger, hunger and taxation, and inexperience and sophistication, the result from the first-round series between two of the three most successful regular-season teams over the last half decade will dictate how the rest of the Stanley Cup Playoffs play out.

First-round series quite literally don’t come bigger than the Toronto Maple Leafs versus Tampa Bay Lightning. We’ve been waiting on this; it should be worth it.

Toronto has left no stone unturned preparing for this moment. It’s become old hat, but Kyle Dubas has once again done incredible work around the weight of the salary cap, assembling the most successful team in the franchise’s more-than-century-old history. Michael Bunting, David Kampf, Ondrej Kase, Mark Giordano and Ilya Lyubushkin have been outstanding cost-effective additions. Ilya Mikheyev, Pierre Engvall and Timothy Liljegren suddenly carry loads of influence. Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are two of the best players on Earth, and form maybe the best partnership on it.

This team is as top-end talented and as deep as it ever has been at virtually every position — save for the goaltenders. It’s really only the situation in net which can be questioned, though I suppose one could preemptively quibble with the fact that Dubas has left that door potentially ajar.

The same sort of plaudits are due on the opposite side — albeit the circumstances are far different. With Stanley Cup rings for each fourth finger, Julien BriseBois clearly has license to chase another with this core by any means necessary. He exercised that privilege at the deadline, spending two first-round selections in…