What a difference a week makes in the NHL playoffs

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Seven days ago, the Toronto Maple Leafs were the betting favourites to win the Stanley Cup. Now, on the brink of getting swept by Florida, they've tumbled to the worst title odds among the eight remaining NHL playoff teams.

Here's a look at how fortunes have swung for Toronto and other Cup contenders as we hit the midpoint of a rollicking second round:

It's all falling apart for the Leafs.

Quite a reversal from last Monday, when one of the subheads in this newsletter was: "It's all falling into place for the Leafs." In our defence, those were heady times. Toronto had just slayed two decades' worth of demons with its first playoff series victory since 2004, and the path to the franchise's first championship in 56 years suddenly looked much clearer after Cup favourite Boston's shocking Game 7 loss to Florida. Instead of facing the big, bad Bruins in the second round, Toronto drew a Panthers team that had the worst record among the 16 playoff qualifiers.

One week later, the Leafs are on the brink of elimination by those Panthers after losing 3-2 in overtime last night to fall into a 3-0 hole in the series. Only four teams in NHL history have overcome that deficit, and NHL.com's Mike Zeisberger points out some more sobering facts: the Leafs have just one regulation win in nine playoff games, they've scored just two goals in each of their past five, and the high-priced quartet of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares has combined for zero goals in the Florida series after each man averaged better than a point per game vs. Tampa Bay.

More bad news: Toronto could be without its No. 1 goalie after Ilya Samsonov left Game 3 with an unspecified injury from a collision with teammate Luke Schenn. Rookie backup Joseph Woll allowed all three Panthers goals.

Also, we clearly underestimated Florida despite ample evidence that they're a quality team. The Panthers just beat a Boston team that set the NHL record for most regular-season wins, they captured the Presidents' Trophy themselves last year, and they're the league's highest-scoring team over the past two seasons combined. With streaky Sergei Bobrovsky running hot, Florida has now won six straight games and is proving to be much more than the fringe playoff team it looked like just a few weeks ago.

Maybe the big two is enough for the Oilers.

Edmonton entered the second round as the betting favourite to win the Western Conference and the No. 2 favourite to hoist the Cup. But, unlike Toronto, everyone knew the Oilers would have their hands full against a deep Vegas team that's capable of containing (to some degree) the damage done by Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

Game 1 was a bad sign for the Oilers as Draisaitl scored four goals but Edmonton still lost 6-4 as McDavid was held to a pair of assists. But the dynamic duo simply took over Game 2, scoring twice each as the Oilers raced out to a 5-0 lead before winning 5-1 to even the series. Draisaitl now has 13 goals in the playoffs — six more than any other player.

As the series shifts to Edmonton for Game 3 tonight at 8:30 p.m. ET, Draisaitl and McDavid rank 1-2 in playoff scoring with, respectively, 17 and 15 points in eight games. Evan Bouchard, the other Oilers goal-scorer in Game 2, is fourth with 14 points. Just a little more help from Zach Hyman, Evander Kane and, especially, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (zero goals in the playoffs after potting 37 this season) would make Edmonton very tough for anyone to beat.

The Kraken are for real.

The second-year expansion team named for a mythical beast is genuinely good. After taking out Stanley Cup champion Colorado in the first round, Seattle went up 2-1 on favoured Dallas with last night's 7-2 rout, sparked by a five-goal second period.

The Kraken are a wild-card team, but they won their playoff spot pretty comfortably with a 100-point regular season in which they posted a plus-33 goal differential — 12th-best in the league. No Kraken finished in the top 50 in points this season, none made the top 30 in the first playoff round, and 40-goal man Jared McCann has been out since getting injured on a hit in Game 4 vs. Colorado. But this well-balanced team keeps finding ways to win as 16 different Seattle players have scored in the playoffs and Philipp Grubauer leads all goalies in total saves.

Can someone please explain the Devils?

New Jersey looked dead in the Hudson River after opening the playoffs with back-to-back 5-1 home losses to the rival Rangers. But the Devils fought back to win Game 7 of that bizarre series in which the average margin of victory was more than three goals.

The Devils also no-showed the first two games of their second-round matchup with Carolina, losing 5-1 and 6-1. So of course they utterly dominated Game 3 back in Jersey, racing out to a 4-0 lead early in the second period before winning 8-4.

The Devils' best player is 21-year-old Jack Hughes, who scored 43 goals in the regular season and has five in the playoffs. And they got a combined five assists last night from fellow Gen Zers Dawson Mercer (a21) and Hughes' younger brother Luke (19). Their coach is 63-year-old Boomer Lindy Ruff. So maybe we can blame the team's outrageous volatility on this weird generational mix. That's a terrible theory, but let me know if you can think of something better because I give up.